AbstractsPsychology

Explorations of Cognitive Agility: A Real Time Adaptive Capacity ABSTRACT By DARREN J. GOOD This dissertation proposes and tests a new construct applicable to real-time adaptation. Cognitive agility is a formative construct that measures the individual ability to exhibit cognitive flexibility, cognitive openness and focused attention. This research seeks to demonstrate whether the formative construct of cognitive agility predicts adaptive performance in a dynamic-decision-making microworld. 181 undergraduates performed three consecutive trials, each of increasing difficulty and cognitive demand, in a microworld computer game called Networked Fire Chief (NFC). The changes within and between trials require the participants to flexibly adapt strategies using both cognitive openness and focused attention, in order to score highly. The individual variables that form cognitive agility, as well as the formative construct, explain unique variance beyond measures of general intelligence on the total score of adaptive performance. Most notably, the cognitive agility construct explains unique variance beyond general intelligence in each of the respective methods of measurement (R2=11% for performance measures and R2=6% for both the self reports and other rater reports). The results indicate a novel combination of abilities that may further the study of real-time adaptability.