Relationship between degree of utterances and working memory capacity in a think-aloud task

Abstract

The think-aloud method requires participants to verbalize all their thoughts while solving problems. This study examines the influences of the think-aloud protocol on task performance and the relationship between individual differences in utterance levels and working memory capacities. In the experiment, participants solved a version of the Remote Associates Test （RAT） where they were instructed to verbalize their thoughts aloud while required to think of a single Chinese character associated with several presented Chinese characters. The participants were subsequently divided into low and high working-memory capacity groups based on the results of a verbal working-memory span task. The results showed that the degree of utterances decreased with increases in task difficulty in the high working-memory capacity participants but increased in the low working-memory capacity participants. This finding indicates that verbalizing aloud while executing a task may differ as a function of working-memory capacity and as task difficulty varies. Moreover, the results also showed that response times tended to be longer with verbalizations, which indicates that thinking-aloud may interfere with task performance.