Development of an Online Operation Span Task for Thai Speakers
Keywords:
Operation Span, working memory, applied linguistics, psycholinguistics, experimental linguisticsAbstract
The Operation Span Task (Ospan) is a working memory span task frequently used in linguistic research. However, the task was originally designed for English speakers, making it potentially unsuitable for Thai speakers. This study aims to develop an automated online Ospan for Thai speakers based on the task proposed by Unsworth et al. (2005). Pytoolkit was used for development as it is a free program that facilitates the implementation of online experiments. Furthermore, this software supports experiments on both computers and smartphones. The task was refined in two key areas: reducing the complexity of mathematical problems and replacing the letters to be remembered with Thai alphabets. A total of 114 Thai native speakers, aged 18 to 78, participated in this study. The results indicate that simplifying the mathematical problems did not overly reduce the task's difficulty. The average score for the Ospan was 61.23% (SD = 19.06), comparable to the findings of Unsworth et al. (2005). Temporal stability, assessed via test-retest reliability, showed a moderate correlation between the two tests (r = .652). Internal consistency analysis revealed a Cronbach’s alpha of .86, also consistent with the results reported by Unsworth et al. (2005). These findings suggest that the online Ospan developed in this study effectively reflects differences in participants' working memory capacity and is reliable.
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