Working Memory refers to the capacity to temporarily retain a limited amount of information that is available for manipulation by higher-order cognitive processes. Several assessment instruments, such as the speaking span task, have been associated with the measurement of working memory span. However, despite the widespread use of the speaking span task, no study, to the best of my knowledge, has attempted to validate it using Rasch Measurement Theory. Rasch analysis can potentially shed light on the dimensionality of a complex construct such as working memory as well as examine whether a collection of items is working together to construct a coherent and reliable measure of a targeted population. This pilot study reports a Rasch analysis of a novel speaking span task, which was administered individually to 31 Japanese junior high school students and scored using a newly developed scoring system. Two separate analyses were conducted on the task: an analysis of the individual items using the Rasch dichotomous model and an analysis of the super items (sets) using the partial credit model. The results indicate that the task measures a coherent unidimensional latent variable and is thus a useful tool for measuring the construct. Moreover, Rasch analysis was shown to be suitable method for evaluating working memory tests.
The listening span task is a measure of working memory that requires participants to process sets of increasing numbers of utterances and store the last word of each utterance for recall at the end of each set. Measures to date have contained an exceedingly demanding processing component, possibly leading to insufficient resources to meet the word recall requirement, which may have affected the sensitivity of the measure to distinguish different levels of working memory. Further, tasks thus far have asked participants to verify the content utterances based on knowledge, which may have confounded the measurement of working memory capacity with world knowledge. An additional weakness is that they lack sound psychometric construct validity evidence, which clouds what these tools actually measure. This pilot study presents a listening span task that accounts for preceding methodological shortcomings, which was administered to 31 Japanese junior high school students. The participants listened to ten sets (two sets of equal length of two, three, four, five and six utterances) of short casual utterances, judged whether they made sense in Japanese, and recalled the last word of each utterance in the set. Performance was assessed through a scoring procedure new to listening span tasks in which credit is given for the words recalled in order of appearance until memory failure. The data was analyzed through the Rasch model, which produces evidence for different aspects of validity and indicates if the items in a test measure a unidimensional construct. The results provided validity evidence for the use of the new listening span task and revealed that the instrument measured a single unidimensional construct.
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