<aside> 💡 You do not need to know how to walk before you can run. But you may need to learn how to walk eventually.

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• The number of chunks that can be in our working memory at any one time is limited. We are not exactly sure what the exact limit is but we know there is one and that it is more less the same across the population. There is nobody with an ‘order of magnitude’ larger working memory capacity.
• There is no limit to the size of the chunks in working memory; in fact, the richer in meaning they are, the better. This is a metaphor. We do not know exactly what those chunks look like and exactly how they work. But we know enough about how people use them to be able to make this a working assumption.
• The chunks exist in our skills inventory as mental representations (I am purposely not calling this long term memory because I do not want to pollute the concept with questions of storage or form; I also do not want to limit this to something that is purely in the ‘brain’)
• Mental representations does NOT mean concepts or ideas because they may contain physical components - we can just as easily think of them as gestures.
• We can acquire mental representations through repetition and we can increase their complexity through reflective repetition. We do not know exactly how much repetition is required but we know there’s a limit to the utility of unreflective repetition.
• For certain types of knowledge or skill performance requiring a high degree of fluency for basic successl, purposeful or deliberate practice is require to develop mental representations that are amenable to chunking into working memory.
• Mental representations are not ‘monadic’ or ‘objects with clear boundaries’ - they are not black boxes to us (up to a point) and we can access their components
• Most importantly mental representations do not have to (and usually do not) correspond to real categories or components as identified in textbooks. For example, if thinking or ‘corner’ as being ‘corn+er’ the same way as ‘teacher’ is ‘teach+er’ is wrong at the level of linguistic description but if somebody can use it to make it easier to learn to spell ‘corner’ (as some people do), that is a perfectly fine mental representation.