The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) assesses executive and frontal lobe function and can be administered manually or by computer. Despite the widespread application of the 2 versions, the psychometric equivalence of their scores has rarely been evaluated and only a limited set of criteria has been considered. The present experimental study (N = 100 healthy adults) therefore examined the psychometric equivalence of 4 scores (i.e., Total Correct, Percentage of Errors, Perseverative Errors, and Failure-to-Maintain-Set) obtained on the 2 versions of the WCST in terms of 4 key criteria identified within the framework of classical test theory. The results showed considerable differences in variances, small to modest parallel-forms reliability coefficients, and small to modest temporal stability coefficients. Taken together, our results suggest that scores on the manual version and the computer version of the WCST show incomplete psychometric equivalence.

This study investigated the role of personality traits and emotional intelligence in relation to resistance to change. The Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised Short Form, the Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory, and the Resistance to Change Scale were administered to 274 Italian physicians and nurses. With respect to resistance to change, the study revealed that emotional intelligence added a significant percentage of incremental variance compared with personality trait variances. The results highlight the role of emotional intelligence and its relationship with resistance to change and offer new research and intervention perspectives for career development and career counseling.

In the present study, it was proposed to investigate the effects of aging on the strategies used to solve a block design task and to establish whether these strategies may be associated with differential patterns of ability. Two groups of subjects, 30 young adults (aged 20-35 years) and 30 middle-aged adults (aged 45-60 years) were set a computer version of the Kohs task and a battery of tests. An age-related decrease in fluid intelligence (Gf) and visual-spatial ability (Gv) was observed, along with the fact that most of the older subjects used a global strategy rather than a synthetic one. On the other hand, while continuing to use strategies of the analytic type, the older subjects looked more frequently at the model and scored high on crystallized intelligence (Gc). These findings are discussed from two different points of view: the theory of hierarchical stimuli and the hypothesis that metacognitive ability, which is thought to rely on Gc, may increase with age, and thus compensate for the loss of Gf and Gv.

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This paper describes the psychological evaluation of educational multimedia applications, which has the potential to be a new direction for applied psychology, arising as it does at the intersection of multimedia technology, education, and psychology, including general, cognitive, developmental, educational, and personality psychology. The paper analyzes the current situation in the field of educational multimedia, and proposes a framework for psychological evaluation of educational multimedia applications. The proposed approach to psychological evaluation of the quality of educational multimedia products involves the following five dimensions: (1) the individual; (2) the learning approach or model; (3) specific characteristics of multimedia technology; (4) the environment; and (5) the relationship among the previous four dimensions.