Journal of Defense Analytics and Logistics (Feb 2018)

Analysis of performance on a modified Wisconsin Card Sorting Test for the military

  • Cardy Moten III,
  • Quinn Kennedy,
  • Jonathan Alt,
  • Peter Nesbitt

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1108/JDAL-05-2017-0007
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 1, no. 1
pp. 34 – 46

Abstract

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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.

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