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Flashcards for Linguistic Chunking

Explanation

Chunking refers to the logical level at which a person thinks about something. For example, when you think of yourself, you could call yourself by name, chunk down and consider the bones and organs of your body, or chunk up and think about your relationships with others, or what it means to be human.

Being able to consider different chunk sizes can greatly enhance your understanding of an issue. This is why it is so common for people to talk about "getting a bigger picture" or "take a detailed look" (although chunking is by no means a purely visual phenomenon!)

Given a particular thought, there are three basic directions in which one can chunk:

• Chunk up by asking What is this an example of?
• Chunk down by asking What is this composed of? or What's a more specific example?
• Chunk laterally by asking What else is like this? (especially useful when creating analogies and metaphors)

This neurotoy is pretty simple stuff. It's simply a tool to help you practice chunking and flexibility of thought. Begin by thinking of a starting thought. This can be a problem you're working on, a random object or activity, or a word chosen at random.

When you have a starting thought, click on the button. You'll get an arrow chosen at random: either pointing up, down, or a double arrow pointing left and right. Take the current thought, and chunk up, down, or laterally, depending on the arrow. Then repeat this step and see where your mind takes you!

Thanks to Zach Marcy for introducing me to this exercise.

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