Further Development of the Assessment of Military Multitasking Performance: Iterative Reliability Testing.

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Military Medicine
• Rehabilitation

Background:

• Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) poses challenges for assessing military personnel's readiness for duty.
• Existing assessment methods have limitations in capturing functional deficits after concussion.
• The Assessment of Military Multitasking Performance (AMMP) was developed to address these limitations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To refine and validate the AMMP, a battery of tasks simulating military activities.
• To evaluate the reliability and feasibility of AMMP tasks for assessing sensorimotor and cognitive functions post-mTBI.
• To improve decision-making regarding return to duty for Service Members after concussion.

Main Methods:

• An iterative process involving repeated interrater reliability testing and feasibility feedback was employed.
• The original 9-task AMMP was modified to a final 6-task version.
• Testing involved 3 phases with 13-26 participants (ages 18-42) including healthy controls and Service Members with mTBI.

Main Results:

• The final 6-task AMMP demonstrated clinically acceptable reliability with intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) > 0.92 for dual tasks and > 0.87 for multitask metrics.
• Three error-recording metrics did not meet pre-defined reliability standards and were excluded.
• The refined AMMP showed strong face validity for injured Service Members and their leaders.

Conclusions:

• The refined AMMP is a promising tool for assessing military personnel following mTBI.
• Continued validation will support its use in providing rehabilitation clinicians with robust return-to-duty assessment methods.
• The AMMP aims to offer objective data to aid in duty-readiness decisions after concussion.