2003 IMTA Proceedings - International Military Testing Association

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for foreign language learning since the era when the DLAB or the Modern Language
Aptitude Test (MLAT) were first developed?
• Could personnel selection and classification for language specialist career fields be
improved by relying more heavily on measures of general aptitude for learning rather
than seeking to refine measures of aptitude for learning specific kinds of things, such as
languages in general, or language families, or specific languages or language skills?
What mix of these approaches would yield the best predictions of success at DLIFLC?
At the conclusion of two days of presentations and small-group working sessions, the
participants were asked to synthesize their opinions and to indicate what kinds of item types
should be involved in a revised test, what existing tests or test parts should be retained, etc.
After the workshop, the expert consultants provided written summaries of their
recommendations, with justifications.
Preliminary synthesis of recommendations
The synthesis presented here is only preliminary because we want to have all of the materials
generated in the workshop reviewed by a prominent cognitive psychologist before we
consolidate them into a final set of recommendations. With that caveat, several key findings
can be stated.
• Most or all of the existing DLAB should be retained.
• Certain DLAB parts should be expanded or replaced by items like those on other existing
language aptitude tests.
• New subtests should be developed to measure constructs that are not now being
measured. Among others, these should include tests of perceptual speed, working
memory, phonological discrimination, and the ability to listen (to one’s native language)
under less than ideal acoustic conditions.
• Consideration should be given to a two-tiered approach to language aptitude assessment:
one to be given before arrival at DLIFLC and another to be given post-arrival. The
former would serve as a gatekeeper for language training in general, and the latter would
be used to make more informed assignments of recruits to languages or even to specific
kinds of instructional environments.
• We should investigate the validity of alternative scoring strategies for both the current
and the proposed system, e.g., by exploiting scores on DLAB parts in a manner similar to
the way ASVAB subsets are grouped into composites for particular screening purposes.
Similarly, we might consider a compensatory model for selection rather than today’s
“multiple hurdles” approach. Such a system might allow the minimum DLAB score to
vary based on appropriate ASVAB scores, or waive DLAB altogether for extremely high
scorers on certain ASVAB subtests or composites.
45 th Annual Conference of the International Military Testing Association
Pensacola, Florida, 3-6 November 2003