First, preemptive and preventive uses of force are often justified by claiming either that there is substantial risk of a future attack or that it is difficult to ascertain how dangerous the target is.
Short-Term Memory: Up to 7 Items, But Highly Volatile. Many psychology experiments have shown that our short-term memory can hold only a limited number of separate items. The average is about 7 items, plus or minus 2, depending on the individual. You can easily confirm this by reading someone a series of words that have no connection with one another, then asking this person to repeat them.
The second cognitive limitation Miller discusses is memory span. Memory span refers to the longest list of items (e.g., digits, letters, words) that a person can repeat back immediately after presentation in correct order on 50% of trials. Miller observed that memory span of young adults is approximately seven items. He noticed that memory span is approximately the same for stimuli with vastly different amount of informationâfor instance, binary digits have 1 bit each; decimal digits have 3.32 bits each; words have about 10 bits each.