CLEP Intro to Psychology Exam Prep

Answer: A - To make it easy to retain information, the brain groups items into chunks.
Key Takeaway: Chunking is a memory retention strategy that is used by people. Instead of remembering a long list of items and risking forgetting them, the mind will group items into chunks. For example, imagine that someone gives you their telephone number and you need to keep it in your head until you can write it down. To do so, you begin by grouping the 3 digit area code into one chunk. Then, you group the first 3 digits of the phone number into another chunk. Finally, you divide the last 4 digits into 2 chunks. In this case, instead of remembering 10 distinctive numbers until you can find a piece of paper, you only need to remember 4 chunks of numbers.