Digit Span: Effect of education and culture

Abstract

The Digit Span test is one of the most commonly used measures of immediate verbal recall, attentional capacity, and working memory in neuropsychological research and clinical evaluations. This test comprises two modalities, digits forward and digits backward. It has been established that age, education, and culture are important variables that affect performance on this test. The purposes of this study were as follows. First, performance on digit span in a Spanish-speaking sample was analysed to establish appropriate age and educational ranges in which data from the Digit Span test can be best analysed, and to determine the contribution of age and education to performance on the digit span forward and backward. Second, different studies on digit span were compared and reviewed in order to identify differences in terms of the variables of age, education, and culture. This study evaluated 2574 Spanish-speaking subjects and three studies were included in the cross-cultural analysis. Scores from the Spanish-speaking sample were matched with the data presented by the other studies according to age and level of education. Results showed that the stronger predicting variable in the Spanish-speaking sample was the level of education, both for digits forward and backward. Regarding culture, differences were found among the studies on digit span for both the forward and backward conditions. It can be argued that learning to read and write affects the development or usage of the abilities measured by the Digit Span task, and that cultural variables such as language and quality of education might also contribute to the differences found between countries. © 2006 International Union of Psychological Science.