The research by Ericsson and colleagues (1980) examined the ability of a college student to achieve amazing feats of memory by having him remember strings of random digits that were recited to him. They found that this student used his experience with running times to help him retain these strings of numbers. The significance of this finding was that ________.

Chunking: The term has been used in cognitive psychology, and is described as a process through which a particular piece of information is connected or bound together in a way that produces a meaningful whole.

A chunk is a group of familiar units, connected and stored in an individual's memory and can be easily accessible due to the familiarity. With the help of these chunks, an individual can even form high order cognitive representations.

In the question above, the significance of the Ericsson's findings was that chunking requires knowledge of familiar patterns or concepts.