The Auditory Consonant Trigram (ACT) Test: A norm updating study for university students

Abstract

The Auditory Consonant Trigram (ACT) Test is accepted as a pure measurement of verbal working memory, but its norm study and psychometric properties have not been sufficiently researched. This study aims to update the norm data of the ACT, validity and reliability studies of which have been previously conducted on an adult Turkish sample, on a broader young sample and in a way that would end some methodological limitations. For this purpose, the data is collected from 304 voluntary healthy young adults (aged 18–26, 152 females–152 males). According to the results, a difference is found among all delay intervals. While the test scores decrease in females as delay interval increases, there is no difference in males between the delay intervals of 9 and 18 sec. While there is no difference between the genders for very short delay intervals (0–3 sec), males show a more successful performance than females as the delay interval increases (9–18 sec). Males are also more successful than females in terms of total test scores of the ACT. In this respect, it is concluded that the ACT measurement of working memory with a total score reliability coefficient of 0.75 is reliable.