Short-term and working memory tasks

A small set of items must be held, and sometimes manipulated, over a delay of seconds before a probe or reproduction; span, capacity or set-size effects are the measures.

This family contains 7 tasks.

Change Detection

Brief sample array followed after a blank delay by a probe array; participant reports whether any item changed. Yields visual working memory capacity (K). Engages 4 processes.

Corsi Block-Tapping

Experimenter taps a sequence on spatially arranged blocks; participant reproduces the sequence forward or backward. Indexes visuospatial short-term and working memory span. Engages 4 processes.

Delayed Match-to-Sample

Sample stimulus followed by a delay and then a probe or choice array; response indicates whether the probe matches the sample. Indexes short-term memory maintenance. Engages 4 processes.

Digit Span

Auditory or visual digit sequences reproduced in forward or backward order; longest correctly reproduced length indexes verbal short-term and working memory span. Engages 5 processes.

N-Back

Continuous stream in which each item must be compared to the one n items back; accuracy and RT index working memory updating and monitoring. Engages 5 processes.

Operation Span

Alternating arithmetic verification and word/letter memory items; complex-span score indexes working memory capacity under processing load. Engages 5 processes.

Sternberg Item Recognition

Short memory set followed by a probe; yes/no judgment of set membership. RT typically scales linearly with set size. Engages 5 processes.