Answer to Question 1
Answer: Chunking is the grouping of individual items into meaningful units. By combining items into larger groups of information, chunking essentially increases the capacity of short-term memory.
Answer to Question 2
Answer: Participants were briefly presented a variable number of items which were then removed during a minimal delay period. Following the delay, a probe item was presented. Participants had to indicate whether or not the probe item matched an item in the memory set. As the number of items in the memory increased so did the response time.
