An Automated Test Battery for Advanced Aviator Assessment

Abstract

A study was conducted to determine whether a number of computerized tests would add new variance to a paper-and-pencil selection battery, the U.S. Navy's Aviation Selection Test Battery (ASTB). The computerized tests came from three different domains: 1) cognitive tests; 2) temporal acuity (visual temporal information processing) tests; and 3) psychomotor tests including video games. These tests were all written in “C” and had been validated against simulated aviation and space shuttle landing tasks. Data were collected on 120 aviation candidates. Analyses indicated that: a) Tests in the new automated battery were generally of adequate to high reliability; b) Correlations between the automated battery and ASTB variables were, with a few exceptions, not large but in the expected directions, suggesting that tests in the automated battery do not duplicate the variance measured by the ASTB, and could thus potentially augment the predictive power of the ASTB; and c) Relationships among the Spatial Apperception Test (SAT) of the ATSB and several of the temporal acuity tests indicate that temporal factors may be involved in SAT performance. At the same time, there is considerable reliable variance unique to each domain, again implying the potential for augmentation of the ASTB by measures from the automated battery.