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.
Highlights
The US Army published its operating concept which describes how the Army will operate at the strategic, operational and tactical level without knowing much about the future environment, location and enemy (USA Department of the Army Training and Doctrine Command, 2014)
The type of operations executed in Iraq and Afghanistan required military leaders to daily assess the situation in their environment and make the necessary changes to their tactics for survival (Brown, 2007; Hartman, 2008; Mulbury, 2007)
Performance on most measures is consistent with results from the original Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) including a sample of veterans of similar age to our participants (Shan et al, 2008; Shura et al, 2015)
Summary
The US Army published its operating concept which describes how the Army will operate at the strategic, operational and tactical level without knowing much about the future environment, location and enemy (USA Department of the Army Training and Doctrine Command, 2014). To accomplish this objective, the training for Army officers must focus on adaptive decision-making through realistic training in actual and virtual. Agile leaders can anticipate and adapt to a given situation to make the best decision (USA Department of the Army Training and Doctrine Command, 2012). The purpose of this study was to: modify a current psychological task that measures cognitive flexibility into a military relevant task requiring decision makers to overcome their experiential bias; and understand underlying causes of individual variability in the cognitive flexibility behavior of active duty military officers on this task
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