Auditory Verbal Learning Task with Immediate Written Recall - AVLT - Form 1

Technical Manual

Script Author: Katja Borchert, Ph.D. (katjab@millisecond.com), Millisecond

Created: January 17, 2022

Last Modified: January 26, 2025 by K. Borchert (katjab@millisecond.com), Millisecond

Script Copyright © Millisecond Software, LLC

Background

This script implements an Inquisit version of the Modified Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (ModRey) by Hale et al (2019). The ModRey is a test of episodic memory performance in non-clinical and pre-clinical populations. It differs from the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) by increasing its difficulty. Specifically the authors a) increased the number of items for the target and distractor lists from from 15 to 20 b) decreased the number of learning trials from 5 to 3 c) added an additional free recall trial of distractor list d) added a source memory task

The original ModRey presents the words orally and collects oral responses. This Inquisit implementation provides the option to choose whether to present the words only orally, only visually or both at the same time. By default, the words are presented only visually. Recall responses are always collected in written format (via textboxes). Recognition and Source Responses (part2) are collected via keyboard input.

!Note: Millisecond also offers an alternative implementation of the Modrey with oral recall input. Verbal recall in those scripts is captured as soundcaptures that have to be scored manually.

References

Hale C, Last BS, Meier IB, Yeung LK, Budge M, Sloan RP, Small SA, Brickman AM. The ModRey: An Episodic Memory Test for Nonclinical and Preclinical Populations. Assessment. 2019 Sep;26(6):1154-1161. doi: 10.1177/1073191117723113. Epub 2017 Aug 11. PMID: 28799411; PMCID: PMC5829025.

Gregg, A. & Sedikides, C. (2010). Narcissistic Fragility: Rethinking Its Links to Explicit and Implicit Self-esteem, Self and Identity, 9:2, 142-161 (p.148)

Duration

10 minutes

Description

Script Modrey_Written Recall_Part1.Iqjs:

(1) Learning Phase with Immediate Recall: Participants are presented a list of 20 verbal words (fixed sequence, list A), one at a time at a time. Once the list has finished, a textbox appears and participants are asked to enter as many of the list words as they remember, in any order. The list learning/immediate recall task is repeated 2 more times.

(2) Introduction of Distractor List: Then participants are distracted with distractor list B (one time).

(3) Short Delay

(4) Free Recall of List A: After listB, participants are asked to recall all words from list A (list A is not presented anymore)

------------------End of part1----------------------------------------

(5) Delay: 1.5h

Script Modrey_Writtenrecall_Part2.Iqjs:

(6) Delayed recall of List A - participants work through through a delayed recall test of list A

(7) Delayed recall of List B// - participants work through through a delayed recall test of list B

(8) Recognition Test (List A) - 66 trials// -target words are list A words; -distractors are phonetically similar and -list B words

(9) Source Test: List A and List B words are presented in fixed order and participant has to decide the words' source list (A or B)

Procedure

(I) 3 blocks: List Learning/Recall Task with list A (IR1-IR3)
- the words are presented with a 2s SOA (editable)
- the order of the words is predetermined and the same across all 3 blocks
- at the end a textbox appears and prompts participants to enter all the words they remember (self-paced)

Recall Task: Scoring Algorithms
Algorithm to estimate number of recalled words:
In general this algorithm uses the number of a specific word separator (here: comma)
to estimate the number of words in between the separators: estimated word count = number of separators + 1
The algorithm uses several steps to clean up the text input to ensure as much as
possible that only single commas are used as word separators. It also removes
trailing commas from the input if necessary.

Steps:
(1) textbox response is stored in values.Recall (Example: values.Recall = "bed; chair; table")
(note: there is a space AND a ; after bed and chair)

(2) values.Recall replaces 7 types of possible word separator symbols (e.g. ";", " ") with a comma
(Example: values.Recall = "bed,,chair,,table")

(3) values.Recall adds a comma to the first item
(Example: values.Recall = ",bed,,chair,,table")

(3) values.Recall replaces all consecutive commas with a single comma
(Example: values.Recall = ",bed,chair,table")

(4) if values.Recall does not end in a comma at this point, this comma is added
(Example: values.Recall = ",bed,chair,table,")

(5) the length of the variable values.Recall is stored in variable values.recallLength
(Example: values.recallLength = 17)

(6) a second variable (values.reducedRecall) deletes all commas in values.Recall
(Example: values.reducedRecall = "bedchairtable" => length: 13)

(7) the word count estimate = length of values.Recall* - length of values.reducedRecall - 1 (extra comma)
(Example: estimate = 17 - 13 - 1 = 3)
•with length = number of characters

the recall scoring algorithms implemented in this script depend on participants
(a) using the implemented separators
(b) make no spelling mistakes
(c) don't use phonetically similar words (e.g. pain instead of pane)
Manual checks of the raw data might be necessary to adjust the scores (see values.intrusionOther)

(II) 1 block: List Learning/Recall Task with list B (IR_listB)
- the words are presented with a 2s SOA
- the order of the words is predetermined and the same across all 3 blocks
- at the end a textbox appears and prompts participants to enter all the words they remember (self-paced)

(III) 1 block (after delay): Free Recall Task with list A (SDFR)
- enter words into a textbox (self-paced)

Stimuli

uses the words of the ModRey (Hale et al, 2019)
(words were pronounced with Google Translate and saved as .wav files)

can be run with version1 stimuli (see modrey_items_form1.iqjs)
can be run with version2 stimuli (see modrey_items_form2.iqjs)

Instructions

are provided by Millisecond - see script "modrey_writtenrecall_part1_instructions_inc.iqjs"

Summary Data

File Name: modrey_writtenrecall_part1_summary*.iqdat

Data Fields

NameDescription
inquisit.version Inquisit version number
computer.platform Device platform: win | mac |ios | android
computer.touch 0 = device has no touchscreen capabilities; 1 = device has touchscreen capabilities
computer.hasKeyboard 0 = no external keyboard detected; 1 = external keyboard detected
startDate Date the session was run
startTime Time the session was run
subjectId Participant ID
groupId Group number
sessionId Session number
elapsedTime Session duration in ms
completed 0 = Test was not completed
1 = Test was completed
list Target list A
form Form 1
recallScoreIR Sum of all correctly recalled items across the 3 IMMEDIATE recall trials (Max: 60)
recallScoreSDFR Sum of all correctly recalled items across Short Delay Free Recall Trial (Max: 20)
recallScoreIRListB Number of correctly recalled items from list B
meanWordRecall Mean of the estimated number of words recalled per trial (IMMEDIATE RECALL only)- independent of recall accuracy
meanRecall Mean number of correctly recalled words per trial (IMMEDIATE RECALL only)
ir1 Number of correctly recalled words on trial 1
ir2 Number of correctly recalled words on trial 2
ir3 Number of correctly recalled words on trial 3
propWord1Recall Stores the recall proportion of word1 of list A
propWord2Recall Stores the recall proportion of word2 of list A
propWord3Recall Stores the recall proportion of word3 of list A
propWord4Recall Stores the recall proportion of word4 of list A
propWord5Recall Stores the recall proportion of word5 of list A
propWord6Recall Stores the recall proportion of word6 of list A
propWord7Recall Stores the recall proportion of word7 of list A
propWord8Recall Stores the recall proportion of word8 of list A
propWord9Recall Stores the recall proportion of word9 of list A
propWord10Recall Stores the recall proportion of word10 of list A
propWord11Recall Stores the recall proportion of word11 of list A
propWord12Recall Stores the recall proportion of word12 of list A
propWord13Recall Stores the recall proportion of word13 of list A
propWord14Recall Stores the recall proportion of word14 of list A
propWord15Recall Stores the recall proportion of word15 of list A
propWord16Recall Stores the recall proportion of word16 of list A
propWord17Recall Stores the recall proportion of word17 of list A
propWord18Recall Stores the recall proportion of word18 of list A
propWord19Recall Stores the recall proportion of word19 of list A
propWord20Recall Stores the recall proportion of word20 of list A
propWord20Recall Stores the recall proportion of words in study positions1 - 20
measure taken across the number of IMMEDIATE recall trials
(Max: 3/3 for each item)
Example: word 1(here: market)
=> word in list position 1 was remembered x out of 3 times during immediate recall
meanIntrusionsIR Mean number of intrusions on recall lists (recalling words that were not on the list) - immediate recall trials only
ir1RecalledWords Stores the list of the recalled words for trial1 (IMMEDIATE RECALL)
ir2RecalledWords Stores the list of the recalled words for trial2 (IMMEDIATE RECALL)
ir3RecalledWords Stores the list of the recalled words for trial3 (IMMEDIATE RECALL)
sdfrRecalledWords Stores the list of the recalled words for trial4 (free recall trial)
recallIntrusions A storage variable that stores all recall intrusion words across the 4 recall trials (list A only)
check for misspelled words here and adjust scores accordingly

Raw Data

File Name: modrey_writtenrecall_part1_raw*.iqdat

Data Fields

NameDescription
build Inquisit version number
computer.platform Device platform: win | mac |ios | android
computer.touch 0 = device has no touchscreen capabilities; 1 = device has touchscreen capabilities
computer.hasKeyboard 0 = no external keyboard detected; 1 = external keyboard detected
date Date the session was run
time Time the session was run
subject Participant ID
group Group number
session Session number
blockcode The name the current block (built-in Inquisit variable)
blocknum The number of the current block (built-in Inquisit variable)
trialcode The name of the currently recorded trial (built-in Inquisit variable)
trialnum The number of the currently recorded trial (built-in Inquisit variable)
trialnum is a built-in Inquisit variable; it counts all trials run
even those that do not store data to the data file.
list Target list A
form Form 1
countIR The number of immediate recall trials run
countAllRecallRounds Counts the number of ALL (immediate + delayed) recall trials ru
stimulusItem The presented stimuli in order of trial presentation
stimulusNumber The itemnumber of the presented stimuli in order of trial presentation
response The participant's response
correct The correctness of the response (1 = correct; 0 = incorrect)
latency The response latency (in ms)
recall Stores the recall text input (with single commas to separate the different words)
countCorrectRecall Tracks the number of correctly recalled words per trial
recallWordEstimate Stores the computer-derived estimate of the number of words recalled
see below of algorithm implemented.
Algorithm does not check whether the recalled words are actual words.
nrOtherRecalledWords Stores the number of other recalled words that are not list words
intrusionOther Stores the character strings contained in the recall string that are not list words
misspelled study words will show up here
word1Recall Stores the number of times the word1 of list A was recalled
word2Recall Stores the number of times the word2 of list A was recalled
word3Recall Stores the number of times the word3 of list A was recalled
word4Recall Stores the number of times the word4 of list A was recalled
word5Recall Stores the number of times the word5 of list A was recalled
word6Recall Stores the number of times the word6 of list A was recalled
word7Recall Stores the number of times the word7 of list A was recalled
word8Recall Stores the number of times the word8 of list A was recalled
word9Recall Stores the number of times the word9 of list A was recalled
word10Recall Stores the number of times the word10 of list A was recalled
word11Recall Stores the number of times the word11 of list A was recalled
word12Recall Stores the number of times the word12 of list A was recalled
word13Recall Stores the number of times the word13 of list A was recalled
word14Recall Stores the number of times the word14 of list A was recalled
word15Recall Stores the number of times the word15 of list A was recalled
word16Recall Stores the number of times the word16 of list A was recalled
word17Recall Stores the number of times the word17 of list A was recalled
word18Recall Stores the number of times the word18 of list A was recalled
word19Recall Stores the number of times the word19 of list A was recalled
word20Recall Stores the number of times the word20 of list A was recalled

Parameters

The procedure can be adjusted by setting the following parameters.

NameDescriptionDefault
Stimuli Parameters
runAudioWords False = run audio stimuli; false = does not run audio stimulifalse
runVisualWords True = run verbal stimuli; false = does not run audio stimuli
if both are set to 'true' they both appear
true
Timing Parameters
soa Stimulus onset asynchrony (in ms): the words are presented roughly 2s apart2000
sdfrDelayMS Short delay (in ms) of the SDFR free recall of list A60000
finishTrialDurationMS The current duration (in ms) of the finish Trial.60000