Design
The current experiment employed repeated measures design. The experiment
design was 3 (Level of distraction: control, low, or high) × 3
(Emotional face: neutral, happy, or sad). The dependent variable was WM
performance, partial span score for the serial recall of emotional
faces, on the modified Aospan. The partial span score is the WM span for
serial recall of emotional faces. For example, if an individual recalled
correctly 2 emotional faces in a set size of 3, 6 emotional faces in a
set size of 6, the partial span scores would be 2 and 6 respectively.
The partial span score has more variance and thus allows for better
discrimination between high and low ability participants (Unsworth et
al., 2005).