Establishing A Cognitive, Health, Physical, And Social-emotional Toolkit To Predict Soldier Performance

Approved for Public ReleasePR2021_84053 TOPIC 704: Behavioral aspects of exercise TITLE: Establishing a cognitive, health, physical, and social-emotional toolkit to predict Soldier performance PURPOSE: To characterize and identify relationships between military personnel traits across the cognitive, health, physical, and social-emotional domains that are related to performance. METHODS: One hundred and ninety-one active duty Soldiers (18-39 years; 191 males (no gender-based enrollment restrictions)) completed interleaved questionnaire-based, seated task-based, and physical task measures over a period of three to five days. Measures were selected based on the following criteria: showed adequate data quality in pilot testing, at least moderately high test-retest reliability (ICC ≥ 0.70 where applicable and available), and/or overlap in other human performance toolkits such as those pinpointed at the Consortium for Health and Military Performance in 2013 . RESULTS: Preliminary dimensionality reduction and network analyses reveal several patterns of interest. First, principal component analysis (PCA) revealed metrics tended to cluster together in five to eight components within each domain examined which yielded Soldier-relevant factors such as cognitive control, emotion regulation, and physical strength as predictors of performance. Second, analyses of cross-domain associations using network analysis illustrated that cognitive, health, physical, and social-emotional domains showed strong construct solidarity. However, to fully characterize Soldier attributes it will be necessary to examine cross-domain associations, for example intersections between physical strength and nutrition, or personality and inhibitory control. CONCLUSION: Together with Soldier operationally-relevant physical and cognitive measures of performance across the lab- and field-based efforts, results from these analyses will guide machine learning aimed to identify critical predictors of Soldier and small unit cognitive and physical performance outcomes. FUNDING: Research reported in this abstract was supported through the US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Soldier Center Measuring and Advancing Soldier Tactical Readiness and Effectiveness (MASTR-E) program.