Wisconsin card sorting test

[David McFarlane]

For those of you who might not read beyond the first line:  I will 
write a professional quality WCST in EP for no charge, if I can only 
get a bit of help.  Read on if interested...

Well, despite the reservations I expressed earlier, on my own time I 
went ahead and threw together a working skeleton in EP for the WCST, 
just to flex my E-Prime muscles.  The basic control logic is really 
quite simple, and with a couple of tricks (e.g., nested attribute 
references) the E-Prime design is rather sleek.

I would like to complete this project to my usual professional 
standards and then submit it for inclusion in the public STEP library 
so that everyone can use it.  In short, I aim to make this no less 
than a completely faithful computerized replica of the standardized 
test, in EP.  But to do that I will need many more specific details 
on the mechanics of the standardized test.  E.g., I have been told 
that the standardized test presents the "response" cards in the same 
pre-ordained sequence for each run, and I need to know that 
sequence.  Also, if I can get hold of the scoring rules then I might 
even have a whack at that, although I think it enough just to have 
the program administer the test & record raw data.  (It would also be 
nice if I could get someone else to do the card graphics, as I am 
lousy at graphics -- I would need only 16 image files, not all 64, 
since I know how to make EP change the colors.)  I should be able to 
learn all I need from the official WCST Manual, with perhaps a look 
at a printed card deck.  But a manual costs $115, and a card deck 
$170, more than I care to spend for something that is, for me at 
least, only a hobby project.

So here's the deal:  If any of you can help me get access to 
materials that fully specify the mechanics of the test (ideally the 
printed Manual and/or cards) then I will complete this project in 
short order and you will all have a professional quality WCST in EP.

-- David McFarlane, Professional Faultfinder


At 8/23/2010 05:24 PM Monday, David McFarlane wrote:
>Well, I toyed with the idea of making a simple WCST in E-Prime just 
>to amuse myself.  But when I looked into it further, I got puzzled.
>
>The WCST started off with simple printed materials administered 
>manually by a human examiner.  Clearly the WCST does not require 
>millisecond precision.  So if we simply want to automate it, why use 
>such an expensive, specialized, and heavyweight platform as 
>E-Prime?  Wouldn't it make more sense to use some more common 
>platform such as JavaScript, or Flash, or Python, or even straight 
>Visual Basic?  Note that the WCST was automated using simple Turbo 
>Basic (for DOS?) as far back as 1996.  Isn't this another case of, 
>"When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a 
>nail"  Or, insofar as I have not kept up with the literature on the 
>WCST, am I just missing something that is obvious to the rest of you?
>
>Also, apparently scoring the test is quite complex (perseverative 
>errors, nonperseverative errors, etc.), so building that into the 
>program (as opposed to leaving that to later data analysis) would 
>take some care.
>
>Finally, did anyone else know that the term "Wisconsin Card Sorting 
>Test" was trademarked by Wells Printing and Digital Services of 
>Madison, Wisconsin, USA (see 
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_card_sort )?  So we cannot 
>give the name "Wisconsin Card Sorting Test" to any printed materials 
>that we produce, but since the trademark does not cover computerized 
>versions we may continue to use the name "Wisconsin Card Sorting 
>Test" for our computerized versions.
>
>With all that said, note that someone did make an automated WCST 
>demo for Inquisit's Millisecond 
>(http://www.millisecond.com/download/samples/v3/CardSort ), though I 
>do not know what data it stores or how it handles the test scoring.
>
>-- David McFarlane, Professional Faultfinder
>
>
>At 8/20/2010 12:10 PM Friday, David McFarlane wrote:
>>As far as I can tell no one has made an E-Prime WCST available on 
>>the Web.  It would be quite interesting to make one.  As I recall, 
>>in essence the task involves operantly rewarding the subject for 
>>correctly following an undisclosed rule, changing the rule whenever 
>>the subject achieves an overall success criterion, and seeing how 
>>well the subject can adapt to the changing rules.  This would 
>>require some interesting code in E-Prime, in particular scoring the 
>>success rate and then changing the "correct" rule on the fly, but 
>>it could be done.  Wish I had the liberty to do it myself.
>>
>>-- David McFarlane, Professional Faultfinder

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