Designing an Auditory Working Memory Task and Investigating the Validity and Reliability

The role of auditory working memory in children’s language acquisition is important. In addition, its connection with development of important language parts such as word acquisition has been well investigated. The present study aimed to develop a suitable tool by use of non-words which reflect the real performance of audithory working memory for evaluation of this system’s performance in such a way that it would be possible to determine its capacity as well as its capability to manipulate information.
The current study has a cross-sectional and tool-making design. Words and non-words were first determined and after designing the task, questionnaire that contained 16 words for word level and 16 non words for non-word level were presented to the specialists for validity determination. Statistical population consisted of 9 to 14 years-old Persian language children of elementary (classes three to six) and Secondary school (classes seven and eight) of which 96 subjects were selected by a multistage method. Test was performed in two levels.
Results showed that words and non-words have content validity. Mean score of the subjects in words and non-words parts was calculated as 8.49 and 7.76, respectively and mean of total scores was 16.25. There was also a correlation coefficient of coefficient 0.952 in word and 0.729 in nonword section in the significance level of of p According to the results, we concluded that achieved auditory memory is valid and reliable for the subjects of the present study.