Open AccessComparation and validation of reading span tasks
Author(s) -
Dejan Lalović,
Dušan Vejnović
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
psihologija
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.222
H-Index - 16
eISSN - 1451-9283
pISSN - 0048-5705
DOI - 10.2298/psi0802251l
Subject(s) - discriminative model , task (project management) , reading (process) , psychology , memory span , span (engineering) , reading comprehension , cognitive psychology , population , measure (data warehouse) , working memory , computer science , natural language processing , artificial intelligence , cognition , data mining , linguistics , philosophy , civil engineering , demography , management , neuroscience , sociology , engineering , economics
The aim of the present study was to compare two most widely employed versions of the reading span task in Serbian speaking population, with respect to the procedure and validity. First step was to compare psychometric properties of several measures of reading span, derived from each task version. Second step was to compare predictive validity of memory span and processing measures, for each task version. Two task versions proved to be parallel, with small discrepanciens, providing reliable and discriminative measures. The only exception was traditional reading span measure, which has not met any of psychometric standards. Therefore, we propose this measure to be abandoned. While processing measures showed better predictive validity with respect to criteria of verbal ability and reading comprehension, reading span measures independently contributed to prediction of the same criteria with only one exception. Results obtained suggest a small modifications of reading span tasks required in order to improve their psychometric properties. They also suggest combining processing and span measures might yield a better verbal working memory efficiency estimate