Measures of visuospatial short-term memory: The knox cube imitation test and the corsi blocks test compared (original) (raw)
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Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 2015
A new tablet device version (IOS platform) of the Spatial Delayed Recognition Span Task (SDRST) was developed with the aim of investigating visuospatial Working Memory (WM) abilities based on touchscreen technology. This new WM testing application will be available to download for free in Apple Store app ("SDRST app"). In order to verify the feasibility of this computer-based task, we conducted three experiments with different manipulations and groups of participants. We were interested in investigating if (1) the SDRST is sensitive enough to tap into cognitive differences brought by aging and dementia; (2) different experimental manipulations work successfully; (3) cortical brain activations seen in other WM tasks are also demonstrated here; and (4) non-human primates are able to answer the task. Performance (scores and response time) was better for young than older adults and higher for the latter when compared to Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients. All groups performed better with facial stimuli than with images of scenes and with emotional than with neutral stimuli. Electrophysiology data showed activation on prefrontal and frontal areas of scalp, theta band activity on the midline area, and gamma activity in left temporal area. There are all scalp regions known to be related to attention and WM. Besides those data, our sample of adult captive capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus) answered the task above chance level. Taken together, these results corroborate the reliability of this new computer-based SDRST as a measure of visuospatial WM in clinical and non-clinical populations as well as in non-human primates. Its tablet app allows the task to be administered in a wide range of settings, including hospitals, homes, schools, laboratories, universities, and research institutions.
Measures of Short-Term Memory: A Historical Review
Cortex, 2007
Following Ebbinghaus (1885/1964), a number of procedures have been devised to measure short-term memory using immediate serial recall: digit span, cube imitation test and Corsi's (1972) blocks task. Understanding the cognitive processes involved in these tasks was obstructed initially by the lack of a coherent concept of short-term memory and later by the mistaken assumption that short-term and long-term memory reflected distinct processes as well as different kinds of experimental task. Despite its apparent conceptual simplicity, a variety of cognitive mechanisms are responsible for short-term memory, and contemporary theories of working memory have helped to clarify these. Contrary to the earliest writings on the subject, measures of short-term memory do not provide a simple measure of mental capacity, but they do provide a way of understanding some of the key mechanisms underlying human cognition.
Knox’s cube imitation test: A historical review and an experimental analysis
Brain and Cognition, 2005
The cube imitation test was developed by as a nonverbal test of intelligence. Many variants show satisfactory reliability, but performance is correlated both with Verbal IQ and with Performance IQ. Performance is impaired by cerebral lesions but unrelated to the side of lesion. Examinees describe both verbal and visuospatial strategies. In a new experiment, performance was disrupted by concurrent random generation, manual tapping, and articulatory suppression. The cube imitation test is not simply a measure of the ability to retain visuospatial information but also depends on verbal representations as well as attentional capacity. Even so, the test was central to the modern appreciation that any adequate measure of intelligence must incorporate both verbal tests and performance tests.
The importance of the body-specificity in the evaluation of visuospatial working memory
Aging Neuropsychology and Cognition, 2020
This work is rooted in the embodied cognition paradigm applied to the evaluation of visuospatial memory span. We aimed to test whether manuospatial incompatibility affects the evaluation of visuospatial working memory. Older and younger participants were tested under two different spatial field conditions, namely manuospatial incompatibility and manuospatial compatibility, using the standard Corsi Block Tapping Task. The results show that a manuospatial compatibility condition helped both younger and older participants to increase their visuospatial working memory span compared to the traditional manuospatial incompatibility condition. By analyzing the data, our results showed an increase of visuospatial memory span in manuospatial compatibility condition (i.e., the experimenter using his left hand and the participant his right hand) compared to manuospatial incompatibility condition for younger and older adults. We recommend that the interaction between body and cognition would be taken into account in clinical evaluation methods.
Phonological and Visuo-Spatial Working Memory in Individuals With Intellectual Disability
American Journal on Mental Retardation, 2003
We evaluated phonological and visuospatial working memory (WM) in autism spectrum disorders. Autistic children and typically developing children were compared. We used WM tasks that measured phonological and visuospatial WM up to the capacity limit of each children. Overall measures of WM did not show differences between autistic children and control children. However, when the recall of children was examined in detail, autistic children showed reduced phonological WM compared with control children. Moreover, phonological and visuospatial WM did not increase with the age of autistic children while a development of phonological and visuospatial WM with age was found in control children. The pattern of results is discussed in terms of previous studies about WM and autism.
The Block Suppression Paradigm developed by is based on the Corsi Block tapping test and requires that a subject reproduces every 2nd block in a given sequence. Results from two studies of a standardized version, the Block Suppression Test (BST), are presented here. In Study 1 the BST was administered to 48 healthy subjects along with a battery of comprehensive neuropsychological tests. The reliability of the BST proved satisfactory under psychometric analysis, while Principal Component Analysis (PCA) confirmed its validity. In Study 2 the BST was administered to a clinical sample of 31 brain-damaged patients to demonstrate its clinical practicability.
2024
Several studies (Grosjean, 2019) have shown that bilingualism provides an advantage in executive functions. Visuospatial Working Memory (vs WM) is a component of "working memory" responsible for the temporary storage and manipulation of visual and spatial information. The aim of this study is to identify and compare vs WM information processing strategies and to highlight different cognitive profiles between monolingual and bilingual children. The methodology of this research is situated within an experimental framework using the Corsi Block-Tapping Test (Corsi, 1972), which specifically assesses Visuospatial Working Memory. The test comprises two conditions: direct spatial memory and indirect spatial memory. In these tasks, the participant needs to tap the blocks shown by the experimenter in direct or indirect order. To gain a better understanding of the characteristics of the presumed cognitive functioning in Corsi Block-Tapping Test success, this study focused on analysing the nature of errors in the "direct" and "indirect" conditions of the Corsi Block-Tapping Test. This comprehensive error analysis allowed for a deeper exploration of how individuals approached Visuospatial Working Memory tasks and provided insights into their cognitive decision-making processes during the test.
Intelligence, 2004
A study was conducted in which 226 participants performed 12 tests, 6 thought to reflect verbal, quantitative, and spatial working memory (WM), and 6 of crystallized (Gc), fluid (Gf), and spatial (Gv) cognitive abilities. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) were computed to test the unitary nature of the WM system. Six primary latent factors were obtained from the verbal, quantitative, and spatial tests. Three second-order latent factors were then obtained from the primary latent factors, following Mackintosh and Bennett's procedure [Intelligence 31 (2003) [519][520][521][522][523][524][525][526][527][528][529][530][531]. A very high correlation was observed among these second-order latent factors. Given this high correlation, those second-order latent factors were collapsed into a single second-order latent factor. The restricted model fitted the data as well as the base model. The result strongly supports the unitary nature of the WM system. It is proposed that this system can be conceived as a single pool of general purpose resources used to temporarily preserve a reliable mental representation of information about any task.
Verbal and Visuospatial Short-Term and Working Memory in Children: Are They Separable?
Child Development, 2006
This study explored the structure of verbal and visuospatial short-term and working memory in children between ages 4 and 11 years. Multiple tasks measuring 4 different memory components were used to capture the cognitive processes underlying working memory. Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the processing component of working memory tasks was supported by a common resource pool, while storage aspects depend on domain-specific verbal and visuospatial resources. This model is largely stable across this developmental period, although some evidence exists that the links between the domain-specific visuospatial construct and the domain-general processing construct were higher in the 4-to-6-year age group. The data also suggest that all working memory components are in place by 4 years of age.