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@kentpitman @screwtape

[Edit: oh, I see you found the wikipedia article. Sorry, I could have sworn I had already read to the end of the thread before I posted. Mea culpa.]

Yes, the seminal psychology paper was "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information".

But it was cited by Newell and Simon, not authored by them. It was earlier, in 1956. It's been argued with as to the number and range, but the basic idea is on target.

> "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information"[1] is one of the most highly cited papers in psychology.[2][3][4] It was written by the cognitive psychologist George A. Miller of Harvard University's Department of Psychology and published in 1956 in Psychological Review. It is often interpreted to argue that the number of objects an average human can hold in short-term memory is 7 ± 2. This has occasionally been referred to as Miller's law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two

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