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Yet, for over 40 years, there was very little follow-up research on the specific processing limitations mentioned in the article. Its wider popular appeal is illustrated in a Google search for the key phrase from the article’s title, the magical number seven (or 7), which yielded about 873,000 results. It is one of the best-known works in the cognitive and psychological sciences, with about 20,000 scientific citations as of this writing (17 October, 2014). Miller’s (1956) article on capacity limits in information processing, suggesting that it is limited to about seven units.
![magic number magic number](https://www.houseofmarbles.us/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/240017-Magic-Numbers.jpg)
The concept of immediate memory was made popular by George A. Google Scholar lists over 2.5 million entries for these three phrases. The terms have somewhat different connotations and detailed meanings, but these are inconsistent among investigators and unimportant for the present purposes. One of the key concepts in the field of cognitive science is that of working memory, often called short-term memory or immediate memory, terms that all refer to the temporarily heightened availability of information about a small number of recent events and thoughts. I will explore the situation, partly based on published sources and partly based on my own e-mail communications in 2000 with Miller, who died in 2012 ( APS Observer, 2012 Pinker, 2013 Vitello, 2012). It seems a paradox for such a widely cited and esteemed source to inspire little closely-related follow-up work for such a long period. It was followed by a 40-year hiatus of work on the topic of item capacity limits in working memory.
![magic number magic number](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/JGNSwsBb40g/maxresdefault.jpg)
MAGIC NUMBER PLUS
How did it come about that a widely-cited work on a subject of fundamental and obvious interest could halt some areas of research rather than inspire them? I would argue that the famous article of George Miller (1956) on “the magical number seven plus or minus two” did just that.