Psychological Assessment Using Simulations with Unrestricted Natural Language Input

Abstract

Five computerized role-playing scenarios, which accept unrestricted natural language input, were developed and administered to seventy-two freshman medical students. The scenarios, written in CASIP, measured and automatically scored each response on five psychological dimensions: Social skills, level of frustration, submissiveness, combativeness, and negotiative ability. The programmed scenarios also monitored nonverbal dimensions, which may reflect the emotional state of the testee. These included: The time it took to start an answer; the time spent reviewing the answer; the lengths of answers and of the words used. The testees behaved significantly different in handling the different role-playing scenarios. While no significant correlations were found between the psychological dimensions expressed in the different scenarios, the tests identified individual testees who displayed a pattern of extremes of psychological behavior.