On Natural (Military) Aptitude Testing
Having looked for a while into joining the air force, I have heard of a large barrage of testing to choose those who will go on to train as pilots. In Canada, candidates are tested for seven hours a day, two days in a row. The tests are designed to be ones that one cannot practice for, and any recruiter will tell you that most measure of natural ability.
I have my doubts that such is the case.
Some of the tests have to do with quick mental math calculations; I don’t think anybody will argue that practice doesn’t make perfect with these. Other tests deal with multiple simultaneous tasks in time scrambles and stress. These tasks include moving a joystick and pedals to move a virtual object to a corresponding target, spotting objects that blend in to their backgrounds, understanding flight instruments presented for only brief moments on a screen, guessing angles, remembering numbers or letters presented visually and audibly, and solving logic puzzles.
Even the formatting is such that it tests you; you are doing cognitive tests for hours, which is exhausting. The tasks are difficult enough that you know you’re not getting everything right, only adding to the stress. I can see how some would do better than others. But to say the testing is about natural ability and cannot be practiced for seems like a stretch.
A decade or two ago, the tests could not be practiced for, from a practical point of view. The software would have been complex and inaccessible; the hardware was expensive. But nowadays we are surrounded by all sorts of electronic mind games. Where’s Waldo is the classic, but it’s on my phone now! So is Luminosity, an app that apparently tracks your mental acuity. Apps that test how quickly you figure out if an item needs to be rotated, flipped, or both to be transformed to another one, apps that test your quick thinking, short-term memory, reaction times, and so many more. Flight simulators and psychomotor tasks are accessible; joysticks are cheap.
Many of us remember the first time we laid our hands on a steering wheel, our feet on the pedals, and tried to get rolling from a stop, trying to be gentle with the accelerator and the clutch. Many of us remember not succeeding the first time. With practice, we got better, and not only at knowing where our own car’s clutch point is, but also how to quickly find it on another car, even if it’s not in the same place in the travel. The benign and overlooked skill of finding a car’s (or motorcycle’s) clutch point is learnable and perfectable, and it would make sense that many of the ones on “natural aptitude” tests are too.
Maybe you won’t go from the 3rd to the 93rd percentile with practice; there is likely a limit. But when somebody tells me that one cannot practice for a test because it measures natural whatever, I will quietly disagree and find something potentially relevant to practice.
Are there any tests out there whose results are truly unchangeable, where practice will not make a difference? If so, when and where and how does the skill develop such that it’s so solidly cemented?
