Symbol Span requires designs and their relative positions to be retained together
Symbol Span is a new WAIS-5 subtest that requires the mental images of designs and their relative positions on the page to remain available together. The person must preserve both what each design looked like and where it appeared.
Remembering only the designs or only the positions is not enough to meet the demands of the task. Visual identity and spatial location must remain bound in one working-memory representation until the response is made.
Symbol Span is a secondary visual working-memory subtest in the US and A&NZ editions
Symbol Span is a secondary Working Memory Index, or WMI, subtest in the 2024 US WAIS-5 and the 2025 Australian and New Zealand Standardised Edition. Together with Spatial Addition, it contributes to the Visual Working Memory Index in these editions.
The WAIS-5 UK also includes Symbol Span and describes its function as retaining the mental images of designs and their relative spatial positions.
Other markets may use a different WAIS edition. WAIS-5 availability by market shows the current releases and edition differences across English-speaking markets.
Visual identity and spatial position must remain linked
Symbol Span draws on several related working-memory processes:
- forming a distinct mental image of each design;
- encoding its relative position on the page;
- keeping the design and position linked rather than remembering them separately; and
- maintaining those linked representations until they are needed for the response.
These are not separate official scores. They describe the visuospatial storage demands that Symbol Span places on working memory, or Gwm.
Symbol Span differs from Spatial Addition and auditory working-memory tasks
| Subtest | Information format | Central task demand |
|---|---|---|
| Symbol Span | Designs and their relative locations | Retain the appearance of each design together with where it appeared |
| Spatial Addition | Visuospatial information | Retain and combine several pieces of spatial information while filtering competing input |
| Running Digits | Spoken digits | Keep recent auditory information current as input continues |
| Digit Sequencing | Spoken digits | Retain a completed set and rearrange it into numerical order |
Symbol Span emphasizes storage of linked design-and-position information. Spatial Addition places greater emphasis on manipulating several pieces of visuospatial information and filtering competing stimuli, while Running Digits and Digit Sequencing work with auditory numerical material.
What higher and lower Symbol Span performance can show
Under standardized WAIS-5 conditions, higher Symbol Span performance shows that the person effectively retained both the mental images of designs and their relative positions. Lower performance means that preserving the designs, their positions, or the link between them was more difficult in this task.
The result provides evidence about visual working memory within the wider assessment. How working memory relates to WAIS indexes explains how visual and auditory task formats sample different parts of the broader ability.
BrainTypeIQ Visual Reversal uses another visual working-memory format: visually presented locations must be retained as a sequence and reproduced in reverse order. This gives BrainTypeIQ a focused measure of visual-sequence storage and manipulation within its five-domain cognitive profile.