Individual differences in digit span and chunking

The present experiment examined the relation between digit span and chunking in adults. Chunking was estimated from performance in a serial anticipation task that included run patterns and patterns discovered in conventionally constructed digit-span sequences. Chunking was indexed by the location of errors made on experimenter-defined chunks and by a measure that makes no assumptions about the location of chunk boundaries. Both measures revealed large individual differences in chunking; however, correlations between these differences and span tended to be weak and nonsignificant. Thus, the results provided no evidence that higher digit spans are due to more active chunking processes.