The original task involves irregularly arranged mounted wooden blocks, and the examiner taps out a sequence that the patient is required to mimic. The BrainLabs version of Spatial Span is a variation of the Corsi block tapping task (Corsi, 1972), a widely used tool in clinical neuropsychology to assess non-verbal memory deficits. The Spatial Span test relies on your visuospatial working memory the component of working memory that allows you to temporarily hold and manipulate information about places. The exact contribution of each test to each performance category may change as more data is collected. The results were published in Neuron in 2012 (Hampshire, Highfield, Parkin, & Owen, 2012). The contribution of each test to each performance category is based on a 'factor analysis' that looked at how tests tend to clump together when measuring a massive set of data. Are you thinking about locations in relation to the whole board, or in relation to the first flash? Can you assign names to locations? Experiment and see what works for you. Look for patterns of flashes that you can easily remember, like a triangle or a square. Like with Digit Span, Spatial Span scores can be increased with 'chunking,' or thinking of a sequence of flashes as one meaningful unit.

Digit span test results