Acceso usuarios
Federico M. González, Jonathan G. Marrujo Sucno, Magali Martínez, Juan Pablo Barreyro, Débora Inés Burin
Working memory (WM) tasks have been extensively studied with laboratory paper and pencil or computerized tasks; few studies have assessed the feasibility and psychometric properties of WM online tests for low-stakes research purposes.We analyzed two different remote online testing implementations of two verbal WM tasks, Letter-Number Sequencing (LNS) and Running Span (RS).LNS was tested in a supervised, online video conference setting in small groups (n = 115), and RS in an unsupervised, asynchronous, remote assessment (n = 289). Both had adequate reliability. However, in LNS, following criteria for minimum performance and “gaming the test” behavior, around 25% participants had to be discarded; scores for set size 2 did not follow the set size effect; and performance was significantly better for the more difficult set sizes as compared to an in-person similar assessment. Conversely, the remote online RS task showed an expected set size effect, and performance was generally equivalent to a similar in-person assessment. Our results put into question the synchronous video conference implementation of the Letter Number Sequence and favor the asynchronous Running Span task.
