Cognition: Memory, Attention, and Learning - Foundations for Designing User-Centered Systems - page 122

Table 5.1 Abbreviations that are more memorable in one culture than another. (Note that
German capitalizes differently compared to English)
For German For English

MfG = Mit freundlichen Grüßen
with kind regards

ABC = American or Australian
Broadcasting Company

CDU = Christliche demokratische Union
a large German political party

PDQ = Pretty darn quick

SPD = Sozial demokratische Partei Deutschlands.
Another German political party

ASAP = As soon as possible

DRK = Deutsches Rotes Kreuz.
rescue service/ambulance/Red Cross

PIA = Peoria International Airport

ZDF = Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen. TV Station TLAs = Three Letter Abbreviations

or Acronyms

GmbH = Gesellschaft mit beschraenkter
Haftung (Society with limited liability,
i.e., a limited company)

CMU = Concrete Masonry Unit

For neither culture: http://us.support.tomtom.com/cgi-bin/tomtom_us.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.
php?p_faqid=2053&p_created=1092921663&p_sid=lXplZnAj&prod_lvl1=141&prod_lvl2=
2030&cat_lvl1=2356&p_accessibility=&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPSZwX3Nv
cnRfYnk9JnBfZ3JpZHNvcnQ9JnBfcm93X2NudD01NCw1NCZwX3Byb2RzPTE0MSwxO
DMsMTk1NCwyMDMwJnBfY2F0cz0yMzU2JnBfcHY9MS4xNDE7Mi4xODM7Mi4xOTU
0OzIuMjAzMCZwX2N2PTEuMjM1NiZwX3NlYXJjaF90eXBlPWFuc3dlcnMuc2VhcmNo
X2ZubCZwX3BhZ2U9MQ**&p_li=&p_topview=1

SCE, ORD and PIA. If the user can group items into a meaningful item, to chunk
it, the subitems are easier to recover because just the chunk has to be retrieved.
These associations or chunks vary across people. We include a few examples in
Table 5.1 , including an item that would only make sense to a computing system.
Finally, the last items presented in a list are better retrieved as well (the recency
effect). The primacy effect and the recency effect can be combined to create a
serial position curve, as shown in Fig. 5.1 .
These regularities suggest that you cannot increase your short-term memory by
trying harder, but you can by presenting items in a particular order. Knowing more
can also help. In air travel, for example, if you know that ORD is the airport code
for O'Hare Airport, FRA is Frankfurt Airport (am der Main), and PIA is Peoria
International Airport, then you only have to retrieve three codes rather than nine
letters if you are presented with FRAORDPIA. This process was used in early
phone systems in the US where regions were given names from the associated
numbers, for example, as immortalized in the song ''Pennsylvania 6-5000'', which
would have been 726-5000 (and would not have been as catchy).
Later theories, such as that embodied in the ACT-R theory (Anderson 1993 ,
2007 ), propose that short-term memory is just activated long-term memory. As
processing occurs, objects are moved directly from perception into long-term
memory. The observed effects for items in short-term memory are just the effects