Figure 1. Trial sequence in the visual working memory task. To measure working memory capacity participants were asked to encode a visual array, and then to retrieve it to report whether a target square had the same or different color as the square that appeared in the same location. (A) the low load included four to-be-memorized stimuli and one target square. (B) the high load included eight to-be-memorized stimuli and one target square.
For more information about the task see (Balaban et al., 2019).
The task is implemented using jsPsych package by de Leeuw, J. R. (2015), check the jsPsych website for great tutorials on the package.
You may run the task using an IDE like visual studio code. Just open the folder, open the index.html file, and then RUN the script without debugging.
Check the code_design file if you want to make some changes in the design.
Look into the data_legend file for information about the task's output.
We already ran the task online on 369 participants in two different experiments in our lab.
As you can see below, visual working memory capacity estimates look almost identical to these from the literature in which the task was done in-person.
Figure 2. A histogram of visual working memory capacity estimates of 369 individuals completing the task online. The dashed black line depicts a normal distribution with the same mean and standrad deviation as the observed distribution.
Author: Ido Ben Artzi
Reviewer: Gili Katabi