The article, “The Digit Span Backwards Task: Verbal and Visual Cognitive Strategies in Working Memory Assessment”, by Hilbert, Sven, Tristan T. Nakagawa, Patricia Puci, Alexandra Zech, and Markus Buhner, aims at investigating the differences in performance between visualizers and verbalizers cognitive strategies by using digit span backwards. The digit span backwards has been used for many decades to assess the working memory capacity. The concept of working memory initiates the way we are able to memorize certain tasks and how we manipulate information into our memory. By using the digit span method, this researcher is able to conduct measurements on short-term memory and utilize it to determine cognitive tasks based on their research. In
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The data collection that was used was with a simultaneous storage and processing test. Also, in the digit span, the data collection that was used is by showing the digits on a computer. In addition, as for the assessment of cognitive strategies, it was measured with a questionnaire. One of the problems that arose regarding the questionnaire was that the researcher used forced-choice questions to categorize participants into verbalizers and visualizers for the analysis. This could be an issue because participants responses could have had been biased, meaning they could just simply say yes to all the questions or no to all the questions without actually focusing on what the questions actually say, which it can also affect the results at the end. An alternative method can be interview, just ask short questions to make sure that the participant was familiarized what the experiment was about and ask opinions on which category they are best at, verbally or …show more content…
The most important findings of the study indicated that cognitive strategy could be the critical factor in the resulting internal processing in which it could be used in future studies regarding working memory processing (Hilbert et al., 2015). The internal validity that was identified is that the subjects could focus just on the memorization task. The DSB needs more clarity because it did not provide all the information that was needed for this experiment. The limitations on external validity were the need to explain the relationship between complex span tasks and the DSB. The strategies that were used to control for extraneous (confounding) variables were by checking for random answering patterns between
The data collection that was used was with a simultaneous storage and processing test. Also, in the digit span, the data collection that was used is by showing the digits on a computer. In addition, as for the assessment of cognitive strategies, it was measured with a questionnaire. One of the problems that arose regarding the questionnaire was that the researcher used forced-choice questions to categorize participants into verbalizers and visualizers for the analysis. This could be an issue because participants responses could have had been biased, meaning they could just simply say yes to all the questions or no to all the questions without actually focusing on what the questions actually say, which it can also affect the results at the end. An alternative method can be interview, just ask short questions to make sure that the participant was familiarized what the experiment was about and ask opinions on which category they are best at, verbally or …show more content…
The most important findings of the study indicated that cognitive strategy could be the critical factor in the resulting internal processing in which it could be used in future studies regarding working memory processing (Hilbert et al., 2015). The internal validity that was identified is that the subjects could focus just on the memorization task. The DSB needs more clarity because it did not provide all the information that was needed for this experiment. The limitations on external validity were the need to explain the relationship between complex span tasks and the DSB. The strategies that were used to control for extraneous (confounding) variables were by checking for random answering patterns between