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memory span

British

noun

psychol the capacity of short-term memory, usually between 5 and 10 items

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

For instance, there is a famous case of the British classical musician Clive Wearing who, because of encephalitis, is said to have the memory span of a goldfish.

From Slate • Feb. 27, 2017

The function that relates the type of pet to the duration of its memory span is more easily visualized with the use of a table.

From Textbooks • Feb. 13, 2015

And while a puppy’s memory span is no longer than 30 seconds, the adult dog can remember for 5 minutes.

From Textbooks • Feb. 13, 2015

What is the memory span of moviegoers these days?

From Time Magazine Archive

In languages as diverse as Welsh, Arabic, Chinese, English and Hebrew, there is a reproducible correlation between the time required to pronounce numbers in a given language and the memory span of its speakers.

From "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023