Creating a Digit Span Task

Hi everyone,

I'm relatively new to DirectRT, and I'm looking to create my first digit span task. I was wondering if anyone has any resources or guidance as to how I'd get started. I've read through the manual a few times now, but haven't had much luck in figuring things out.

The task would ask people to recall strings of digits by seeing them flash on the screen, and then being asked to do free recall (typing the numbers in) after a delay. The program would need to record whether participants responses were correct or incorrect. I'd like to increase the number of digits sequentially until the participant gets a number wrong, and then end the task.

Sorry to ask for so much general help! I'm hoping this is a fairly common type of task and someone can just direct me to the right resource, or give me a hint to push me in the right direction. Thanks in advance for any help!

Hi viscoglab!

This is an interesting question. The tricky part is that you are looking for open-ended responses for the recall to be judged as correct or incorrect. I think that it is possible using the responses.xls feature of MediaLab.

Let's say that you have participants recall the digit span in any kind of MediaLab item type except an essay item (responses.xls files cannot access answers to essay items). You could then use the name of that variable in a responses.xls file. In the skipto field of the row in the responses.xls file for that item, you should be able to create an Excel formula that suggests if the participants type the correct value they should skip to another digit span item in the questionnaire file but skip to an common ending point if they get it incorrect. Just repeat this for as many different digit spans as you would like to include in your study.

If you have any questions about this idea or would like me to look at any files you put together for this task, please don't hesitate to ask.

Good luck!

Hi there,

Was just wondering if anyone had a .csv file for the Digit Span Task that they could share with us on here?

Thanks!
CSaad

[QUOTE=jason_reed;19748]Hi viscoglab!

This is an interesting question. The tricky part is that you are looking for open-ended responses for the recall to be judged as correct or incorrect. I think that it is possible using the responses.xls feature of MediaLab.

Let's say that you have participants recall the digit span in any kind of MediaLab item type except an essay item (responses.xls files cannot access answers to essay items). You could then use the name of that variable in a responses.xls file. In the skipto field of the row in the responses.xls file for that item, you should be able to create an Excel formula that suggests if the participants type the correct value they should skip to another digit span item in the questionnaire file but skip to an common ending point if they get it incorrect. Just repeat this for as many different digit spans as you would like to include in your study.

If you have any questions about this idea or would like me to look at any files you put together for this task, please don't hesitate to ask.

Good luck![/QUOTE]