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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

This is meager compared to a cat, whose memory span lasts for 16 hours.

From Textbooks • Feb. 13, 2015

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

He attributes his speed and accuracy to "swift perception, long memory span, fluent associations, concentration, imagery."

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