Attention Control Measures Improve the Prediction of Performance in Navy Trainees

We present a theoretical framework and empirical data from a sample of 490 U.S. Navy trainees (air traffic controllers, student naval aviators, and student naval flight officers) supporting the use of attention control tests in personnel selection. Current military selection tests leave room for improvement when predicting individual differences in work-relevant outcomes and reducing adverse impact. We tested whether measures of attention control, working memory capacity, and fluid intelligence improved the prediction of training success above and beyond the current composite scores used by the U.S. Military. For air traffic controllers in training, attention control explained 9.1% of the unique variance in academic performance, whereas the Armed Forces Qualification Test explained 5.2% of the unique variance. For student naval aviators, incremental validity estimates were generally small and non-significant. For student naval flight officers, attention control measures explained 11.8% of the unique variance in aviation preflight indoctrination training performance and 4.3% of the unique variance in flight performance. In general, attention control measures improved training outcome classification accuracy, and the antisaccade and selective visual arrays tests of attention control demonstrated relatively small differences between majority and minority subgroups.