TEMPLATES IN CHESS MEMORY - A MECHANISM FOR RECALLING SEVERAL BOARDS

This paper addresses empirically and theoretically a question derived from the chunking theory of memory (Chase & Simon, 1973a, 1973b): To w hat extent is skilled chess memory limited by the size of short-term m emory (about seven chunks)? This question is addressed first with an e xperiment where subjects, ranking from class A players to grandmasters , are asked to recall up to five positions presented during 5 s each. Results show a decline of percentage of recall with additional boards, but also show that expert players recall more pieces than is predicte d by the chunking theory in its original form. A second experiment sho ws that longer latencies between the presentation of boards facilitate recall. In a third experiment, a Chessmaster gradually increases the number of boards he can reproduce with higher than 70% average accurac y to nine, replacing as many as 160 pieces correctly. To account for t he results of these experiments, a revision of the Chase-Simon theory is proposed. It is suggested that chess players, like experts in other recall tasks, use long-term memory retrieval structures (Chase & Eric sson, 1982) or templates in addition to chunks in short-term memory to store information rapidly. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.