Abstract
The present study reports an extension and validation of a test battery, SPARTANS 2.0, expressly designed to detect modest or incipient neuropsychological dysfunction in highly skilled operators, in this case aviators. Four characteristics of the battery were demonstrated. First, subtasks within the battery are relatively insensitive to practice. Second, the battery retains its ability to discriminate pilots from individuals with neuropsychological impairment, even when used with a different group of subjects than the one on which it was validated initially. Third, inclusion of a non-pilot control group demonstrated that the battery is indeed assessing neuropsychological dysfunction and not pilot expertise. Finally, principal components analysis demonstrated that the battery assesses the specific categories of cognitive skill that it was designed to measure.
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