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

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.

It’s about time: mitigating cancer-related cognitive impairments through findings from computational models of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task

“…While all WCST outcome measures offer valuable insights into cognitive performance, perseveration errors (PE) – the continued use of a previously correct sorting strategy despite being informed that it is incorrect – has gained special attention across various populations [ 14 ] due to its consistent association and utility in predicting important outcomes across occupational (e.g., occupational performance [ 15 ], adaptive and agile decision making [ 16 ]), and psychopathology domains (e.g., Major Depressive Disorder [ 17 , 18 ], obsessive-compulsive disorder [ 19 , 20 ], anorexia nervosa [ 21 ], anxiety disorders [ 19 , 22 , 23 ], and schizophrenia [ 14 , 24 ]). These outcomes are particularly salient within cancer survivorship e.g., [ 25 – 35 ], thus PE performance on the WCST is an appealing domain of assessment.…”