ADAPTING WECHSLER’S DIGIT SPAN TEST FOR MEASURING THE WORKING MEMORY CAPACITY TO BOTH ENGLISH AND ARABIC CONSTRAINTS
The present study touches upon the problem of the arabization, elaboration, codification and adaptation of tests to cultural peculiarities, in general, and linguistic specificities, in particular, when the original test language differs from the target language, in terms of structure, syntactic features, and graphitic form as well. Bearing in mind the Digit Span Test to measure the capacity of working memory developed by Wechsler, the question is whether we can apply this test, as was originally developed, to our Arabic linguistic reality. The answer to such a question might be positive, given that all the required elements are available for this test to be universal and intercultural. Nevertheless, the question about the effect of language on the working memory capacity, which has been shown in many inter-linguistic studies, leads us to some revisiting of the structure of this test. As long as working memory is affected by the length of the words, and given the disparity in the syllabic and phonemic length of numbers in both Arabic and English, we propose a method to reorganize the numbers in the test according to the pronunciation length of the graphemes which represent the numerals in Arabic. Then, we proceed in analyzing the linguistic phenomena interacting within the structure of the Arabic numerals, and then transform them statistically into patterns and finally provide a practical model to organize numbers within the test, a model that fits the specificities of the long form of numerals in Arabic, and meets the graduation principle requirements in terms of the time needed for the realization of these numerals, and fits the upward progress when moving from one number sequence to another. Key words:
Keywords: Working Memory; Wechsler’s Digit Span Test; Arabic Language; Tests Adaptation; Culture.