#DIGIT SPAN TEST BACKWARD INTERPRETATION PLUS#
#DIGIT SPAN TEST BACKWARD INTERPRETATION SERIES#

As a psychological test, digit span and other techniques to measure span of apperception have long history. The second and more frequently used meaning of the term digit span is as the name of psychological tests to assess working memory and/or the ability to retain and keep in mind a circumscribed amount of information for a short period of time (Wechsler, 1997).

#DIGIT SPAN TEST BACKWARD INTERPRETATION PLUS#

Thus, more than 80 years before George Miller’s seminal paper (1956) “The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information”, the basic paradigm of span as a psychological method had already been examined. Holmes’ son, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., was a well known jurist and was appointed Associate Justice to the Supreme Court by President Theodore Roosevelt.) Several years later, Ebbinghaus made a similar observation commenting, “the question can be asked, what number or syllables can be correctly recited after only one reading… for me the number is usually seven”, (1885, cited in Richardson, 2007). Holmes is credited for naming the city of Boston The Hub of the Universe. In addition to his other achievements Dr. Holmes was a founder of the Atlantic Monthly magazine. Holmes was a member of an illustrious group of Boston literati and could count as his friends such individuals as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Holmes popularized the use of the stethoscope as medical instrument. In addition to his achievements as Dean of Harvard Medical School, Dr. (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., M.D., a resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts, was a very influential nineteenth century physician.

#DIGIT SPAN TEST BACKWARD INTERPRETATION SERIES#

In America, Oliver Wendell Homes pater (1809–1894 1871 cited in Richardson, 2007) made cogent observations on the parameters of digit span as a method to assess span of apperception, i.e., “in uttering distinctly a series of unconnected numbers or letters before a succession of careful listeners, I have been surprised to find how generally they break down, in trying to repeat them, between seven and ten figures or letters” (Holmes, 1871, cited in Richardson, 2007). In the nineteenth century, Herman Ebbinghaus (1850–1909 1885/1964 cited in Richardson, 2007) was the first cognitive scientist to show how span could be used as an experimental paradigm to investigate memory and learning. (Much of the historical information reviewed in this essay is drawn from JTE Richardson’s paper: Measurements of short-term memory: A historical review. He termed this capacity the span of apperception. Leibniz suggested that individuals have a finite capacity to prospectively process or hold in mind the information from the environment. The origins of digit span as a psychological construct date from the work Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716). First and foremost digit span, along with reaction time, may be viewed as one of the two original paradigms used by experimental psychologists to investigate cognition. The term digit span encompasses several important constructs and names of tests designed to measure these constructs.

Digit span test backward interpretation