Development of an Operational Setting Specific Field Cognitive Assessment Procedure

Abstract

The assessment of dynamic cognitive abilities during actual field operations by professional personnel represents a significant challenge to the behavioral scientist. Here, we present a short-duration, portable cognitive assessment instrument which seeks to address such issues. Any such instrument with poor face validity is unlikely to receive the required attention and cooperation of operational personnel. Also, if supervisors see little relationship between the assessment procedure and the actual operational tasks they are unlikely to use outcome results anyway. This work summarizes our customization of an established cognitive assessment battery, which is composed of operationally relevant tasks for field assessment. Our present results suggest equivalent user acceptance and comparable assessment capacity as the longer duration, currently established battery.

Military Cognitive Readiness at the Operational and Strategic Levels

“… Note . ACRA = Army Cognitive Readiness Assessment (Swann & Schmidt, 2005); PVT = Psychomotor Vigilance Test (Dinges & Powell, 1985); ARES-I = Automated Readiness Evaluation System Infantry Version (Harris, Reeves, Elsmore, & Hancock, 2006); WAIS = Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale; ASVAB = Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery; STAT CREATIVE = Sternberg Triarchic Abilities Test (Sternberg & The Rainbow Project Collaborators, 2006); I-ADAPT-M = Individual Adaptability Measure (Ployhart & Bliese, 2006); NEO-PI = NEO Personality Inventory (Goldberg et al, 2006); IPIP = International Personality Item Pool (Goldberg et al, 2006); EQV-BT = Eysenck Personality Questionnaire–Brief Version (Sato, 2005). a. Further validity assessment needed. …”

“…Thus, the greater these psychomotor abilities are prior to training, then the higher proficiency can be achieved. There are many measures of psychomotor abilities for cognitive readiness available, including the Army Cognitive Readiness Assessment (Swann & Schmidt, 2005), Psychomotor Vigilance Test (Dinges & Powell, 1985), Automated Readiness Evaluation System Infantry Version (Harris, Reeves, Elsmore, & Hancock, 2006), SYNWORK (Elsmore, 1994), and Cognitive Skills Armory (O’Donnell, Moise, & Schmidt, 2005).…”