About the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test
The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) presents the subject with 128 response cards that vary on three dimensions (color, shape, number) and four stimulus cards. The subject sorts each response card under one of the stimulus cards; the examiner says only "correct" or "incorrect" based on a hidden sorting rule.
After 10 consecutive correct sorts, the rule changes without warning. The subject must abandon the old rule and discover the new one from feedback alone. The test continues until 6 categories are completed or all 128 cards are used. Perseverative errors (continuing to sort by the old rule) indicate set-shifting failure, classically associated with prefrontal cortex damage.
The WCST is one of the most-used tests in clinical neuropsychology. It is sensitive to frontal lobe lesions, schizophrenia (where perseveration is a hallmark), drug effects, and normal aging. The 1948 original is public domain; the commercial Heaton (1981) computerized scoring is copyrighted but the underlying paradigm is free.
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Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (1948): infer the hidden sorting rule from feedback. Each item describes a card and shows what the sorting rule REWARDS; pick which stimulus card the response card should be placed under. Tests set-shifting and rule inference.
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Source
All test materials and historical content on this page are transcribed from:
Berg, E.A. (1948). A simple objective technique for measuring flexibility in thinking. Journal of General Psychology, 39, 15-22.
Esta Berg developed the original sorting technique as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin; David Grant was her advisor. The Berg-Grant 1948 paper has been cited over 5,000 times.
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