Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST)

Assess perseveration and abstract reasoning.

Although the WCST is used primarily to assess perseveration and abstract thinking, it has gained increasing popularity as a neuropsychological instrument. It has been considered a measure of executive function because of its reported sensitivity to frontal lobe dysfunction. As such, the WCST allows the clinician to assess the following "frontal" lobe functions: strategic planning, organized searching, utilizing environmental feedback to shift cognitive sets, directing behavior toward achieving a goal, and modulating impulsive responding.

• Designed for individuals ages 6.5-89 years.
• Has shown specific sensitivity to brain lesions involving frontal lobes.
• Can be considered a measure of executive function, requiring the ability to develop and maintain an appropriate problem-solving strategy across changing stimulus conditions in order to achieve a future goal.
• Provides objective scores not only of overall success, but also for specific sources of difficulty on the task (e.g., inefficient initial conceptualization, perseveration, failure to maintain a cognitive set, and inefficient learning across stages of the test).
• The four stimulus cards incorporate three stimulus parameters.
• The stimulus cards and response cards use the systematic figure configurations originally developed and introduced in 1948 by David A. Grant, PhD and Esta A. Berg, PhD.
• Raw score to normalized standard score, percentile, and T score conversions are provided.
• Normative data derived from 899 normal children, adolescents, and adults.
• Case illustrations aid in scoring and interpretation.

Administration/Scoring

• The response cards are numbered from 1 to 64 (on the reverse side) to ensure a standard order of presentation.
• Respondents are required to sort the cards according to different principles during the test administration.

Appropriate Populations

• Clients should have normal or corrected vision and hearing sufficient to adequately comprehend the test instructions and to visually discriminate the stimulus parameters of Color, Form, and Number.
• Among clinical populations with known or suspected brain dysfunction, these requirements may not be fully met. In such cases, the reliability and validity of the WCST data will depend on the clinical skill and expertise of the examiner.

Special Features

• Unlike other measures of abstraction, the WCST provides objective measures of overall success and identifies particular sources of difficulty on the task.
• When used with more comprehensive ability testing, the WCST is helpful in discriminating frontal from nonfrontal lesions.

SCST Manual - Revised and Expanded

The comprehensive WCST Manual has been extensively revised and expanded. It provides explicit instructions for standardized administration and scoring of the WCST and reports normative data from 899 subjects ages 6.5-89 years.

The Manual also presents reliability and validity information on the use of the WCST with child and adolescent populations. Research regarding the psychometric properties and use of the WCST in adult populations is reviewed, and new validity data are presented. This Manual also summarizes diagnostic implications and provides guidelines for clinical interpretation of test results.

The WCST Manual - Revised and Expanded comes with the WCST Introductory Kit.

Scoring Program

This unlimited-use software provides all the scoring and reporting features of the full WCST:CV4™. The program does not administer the WCST on-screen. The reports are more visually attractive and easier to read than those reports generated by earlier versions of the software.

The clinician enters the item responses from a previously administered WCST test. The software generates only the possible valid responses to each card, preventing certain errors in data entry. The clinician can select all the valid dimensions to which the client was matching, or he or she can click on any one of the valid dimensions and the software will automatically record any other dimension matches for that card.

WCST Computer Version Record Forms must be used with the scoring software.