The Development, and Day-to-Day Variation, of a Military-Specific Auditory N-Back Task and Shoot-/Don’t-Shoot Task

During military operations soldiers are exposed to numerous physical and psychological stressors. Establishing reliable occupationally relevant cognitive assessments is important to inform the development and evaluation of evidenced based strategies to improve performance. This study assessed the inter-day reliability of two bespoke military specific cognitive assessments; a military specific auditory n-back task (MSANT) and a shoot/don’t-shoot task (SDST). Twenty-eight participants completed both tasks seated, across three visits. Twelve participants also completed both tasks whilst walking (10 minutes, 6.5 km·h-1, 1% gradient) over three further visits. Limits of agreement ± 95% confidence intervals, standard error of the mean, and smallest detectable change were calculated for each performance variable, to assess reliability. All parameters within the MSANT (total correct, total partially correct, and total combined correct) and SDST (shoot correct, don’t shoot correct, total correct, response time, and accuracy-speed trade-off) demonstrated no mean difference for visit in either the seated or walking condition (p > 0.05). For the seated condition, the mean smallest detectable change for total correct responses was 7.3% for the SDST and 20.6% for the MSANT. Collectively, the data demonstrated that the MSANT and SDST are reliable and expedient military specific cognitive assessments, capable of completion during seated or walking conditions.