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There is a really outstanding discussion of this in Tor Norretranders _The
User Illusion_ (Viking: 1998), Chapter 6, The Bandwidth of Consciousness.
The short answer to your question is that we can process about 40 bits per
second. Just to give you some sense of scale, an alert human inputs about
11 million bits per second of data (mainly though sight), of which only a
very tiny fraction ever becomes conscious.
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On Tue, 7 Jul 1998, Toni Williams TPG/SG wrote:
> But, what constitutes a "unit" of information?
>
> Toni
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Katy Wegner [SMTP:kwegner -at- TARGETSMARTINC -dot- COM]
> > Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 1998 4:39 PM
> > To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
> > Subject: Re: Chunking
> >
> <snip>
> > People can easily process and retain about 7 units of information at a
> > time.
> > They retain a list of related concepts better than a list of unrelated
> > concepts.
> > They are more likely to remember the first and last items in a list.
> >
> <snip>
>
