Reading Span Task (RST)

The original RST required participants to read series of unconnected sentences aloud and to remember the final word of each sentence of a series (grouped according to the total number of sentences). With each sentence presented on a card, participants were cued to recall the memorized end-of-sentence words in their original order by a blank card at the end of a series.

The number of sentences of a series was incrementally increased until a participant's reading span, or the maximum number of final words correctly recalled, was found.