Task Details

 

This 'reading span' task is a complex span task very similar to the operation span task. The difference is that the processing task that the participants engage in after seeing the TBR material requires participants to make judgements on whether sentences they read make sense or not in between being shown material they must remember in correct serial order. the TBR material can be digits or words depending on the options you set in the XML.

Screenshots

 

Presentation Phase

Image shows a 
			screenshot of what the program looks like while delivering the presentation phase of 
			the task - digit
Image shows a 
			screenshot of what the program looks like while delivering the presentation phase of 
			the task - sentence

Recall Phase

Image shows a 
			screenshot of what the program looks like while delivering the recall phase of the 
			task, asking for the first number they recall seeing

The XML

 

You can download the default XML on the downloads page. In this section I will point out the customisation options at your disposal by modifying values in the XML.

Under task settings there is a section of code where we tell the application where to find the executable that handles the digit span task. The property name/value keys here are where we can set task-specific properties.

Number of trials

You can select how many trials of each span size you want. The properties to edit here are:

  • 'spanTwoTrials'
  • 'spanThreeTrials'
  • 'spanFourTrials'
  • 'spanFiveTrials'
  • 'spanSixTrials'
  • 'spanSevenTrials'
  • 'spanEightTrials'
  • 'spanNineTrials'
The default values for these properties are "3" for spans 2 through 6 and "0" for spans 7/8/9. Therefore as it stands the module will administer 3 trials at each list length up to 7 and none at list length 8 or 9. Simply change the integer values within the quotes for each span*Trials property to get the desired number of trials.

*NOTE* as it stands the application has a sentence file included that contains 63 sentences. Therefore you will encounter errors if you specify a number of trials that requires more than 63 sentences. A future update will address this lack of flexibility.

Sequential/Randomised trial order

This property decides if the trials are administered in sequential order or not with regards to the list lengths. If sequential then all list length 2 trials are given, followed by all list length 3 trials, and so forth. However, it is often the case that a researcher may wish to administer these trials in a random order so that the participant is not aware on any given trial how many digits they will have to store/recall. The property to edit is:

  • 'randomisedTrials'
The default value is "0" which is the code for sequential order. The alternative is "1" which is the code for random order.

Digit range

Controls the range of digits that the application uses to select digits as stimuli in the trials. The properties to edit are:

  • 'minDigit'
  • 'maxDigit'
The default values are "1" and "99" respectively meaning that any presented digit can range from 1 to 99 (inclusive).

Data Analysis

 

After running the reading span processing script (download from here) you will get a data frame with the following variables. Information on running the script and obtaining the processed data is here

Variable Name Description
fta.score This is the score the participant achieved when the full-trial accuracy scoring method is used.
prop.score The score obtained by the participant when the proportion correct method of scoring is used.
number.successes The score obtained by the participant when the number of correctly recalled elements method of scoring is used.
processing.accuracy The proportion of the operations that were successfully answered.
processing.median.rt The median response time for answering during the processing phase.
max.span Maximum list length at which the participant successfully recalled all the elements in the trial.
span.2.corr Number of trials successfully answered (all digits recalled) at list length 2 - "NA" value if there were no trials at this list length administered
span.3.corr Number of trials successfully answered (all digits recalled) at list length 3 - "NA" value if there were no trials at this list length administered
span.4.corr Number of trials successfully answered (all digits recalled) at list length 4 - "NA" value if there were no trials at this list length administered
span.5.corr Number of trials successfully answered (all digits recalled) at list length 5 - "NA" value if there were no trials at this list length administered
span.6.corr Number of trials successfully answered (all digits recalled) at list length 6 - "NA" value if there were no trials at this list length administered
span.7.corr Number of trials successfully answered (all digits recalled) at list length 7 - "NA" value if there were no trials at this list length administered
span.8. corr Number of trials successfully answered (all digits recalled) at list length 8 - "NA" value if there were no trials at this list length administered
span.9.corr Number of trials successfully answered (all digits recalled) at list length 9 - "NA" value if there were no trials at this list length administered
user The value of the username of the account which produced the data