Briefly describe the N-back task. How are the results of this task interpreted?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answer: A string of items (e.g., letters) are presented during an N-back task and participants are asked to indicate whether the current item in the string matches an item that is N back from it. N is typically 1, 2, or 3. If N is 2, for example, a participant would respond no-no-yes-no to the string C B C D. Since the experimenter can hold the identity and order of items constant, the only factor changing in this design is the working memory load. However, as load increases from 1 to 3 items back, more items need to be stored along with information about the order of the items. Therefore, it is difficult to know whether or not the increase in response of the N-back task with increasing load is related to maintaining more items in working memory or the executive processing required to preserve the order information of the items.