EXPECTANCIES
The short term memory of humans has been found to be able to process approximately seven bits of information per unit of time.
But, practically speaking, we seem to handle much more than that, particularly in the perception of language where the flow of information is layers deep.
The brain seems to have developed a strategy that increases the amount and the speed of information processing manifold. This is what expectancies is all about.
We have mentioned that perception is always a guess as to what the stimulus is that we are receiving now. But it is even more than that. It is a guess as to what the next stimulus will be.
More often than not, when someone talks to you, you know in advance what the next word will _____. Because you knew I would write or say “be,” you didn’t have to really process all of the sentence through short-term memory.