Analysis of Performance on a Modified Wisconsin Card Sorting Test for the Military
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Authors
Moten, Cardy III
Kennedy, Quinn
Alt, Jonathan
Nesbitt, Peter
Subjects
Military
Cognitive flexibility
Non-perseverative errors
Wargaming
Wisconsin Card Sorting Test
Working memory
Cognitive flexibility
Non-perseverative errors
Wargaming
Wisconsin Card Sorting Test
Working memory
Advisors
Date of Issue
2017
Date
Publisher
Emerald Publishing Limited
Language
Abstract
Purpose
Current Army doctrine stresses a need for military leaders to have the capability to make flexible and adaptive decisions based on a future unknown environment, location and enemy. To assess a military decision maker’s ability in this context, this paper aims to modify the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test which assesses cognitive flexibility, into a military relevant map task. Thirty-four military officers from all service branches completed the map task.
Design/methodology/approach
The purpose of this study was to modify a current psychological task that measures cognitive flexibility into a military relevant task that includes the challenge of overcoming experiential bias, and understand underlying causes of individual variability in the decision-making and cognitive flexibility behavior of active duty military officers on this task.
Findings
Results indicated that non-perseverative errors were a strong predictor of cognitive flexibility performance on the map task. Decomposition of non-perseverative error into efficient errors and random errors revealed that participants who did not complete the map task changed their sorting strategy too soon within a series, resulting in a high quantity of random errors.
Originality/value
This study serves as the first step in customizing cognitive psychological tests for a military purpose and understanding why some military participants show poor cognitive flexibility.
Type
Research Paper
Description
The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JDAL-05-2017-0007
Series/Report No
Department
Operations Research
Organization
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Identifiers
NPS Report Number
Sponsors
Funder
Format
13 p.
Citation
Moten III, Cardy, Quinn Kennedy, Jonathan Alt, and Peter Nesbitt. "Analysis of performance on a modified Wisconsin Card Sorting Test for the military." Journal of Defense Analytics and Logistics 1, no. 1 (2017): 34-46.
Distribution Statement
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.