Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST)

The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) is a psychological test that analyzes behavioral flexibility of animals.

WISCONSIN CARD SORTING TEST (WCST)

Apparatus

At the beginning, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) is a behavioral test developed in Humans. It allows to analyze cognitive performances (learning and memory).

The WCST for animals includes:

  • a computer with POLY_WCST software to manage the experiment and POLY_Files to extract the results,
  • a tactile screen (projected capacitive technology),
  • a set of 3 dispensers on a structure,
  • an electronic interface,
  • a remote control.

 

WCST for Primates                            WCST-screenshot

distributeur seul

For the WCST for primates, we developed a specific dispenser which is composed of 27 small independent reward containers. This dispenser can deliver various and uncalibrated rewards such as pellets, dried fruits…etc.

For this task, 3 dispensers are used in serial, so that once the first dispenser is empty, the next reward will be distributed by the second dispenser. As a consequence, the system can distribute 81 rewards in a raw.

WCST

Software

Our software POLY_WCST allows:

  • to determine cognitive tasks, number of image, inter-trial intervals, number of rewards…etc.
  • recording of animal answers.

A software module calculates:

  • correct and incorrect answers,
  • premature and delayed answers,
  • delay of response,
  • kinetics of answers per customized time unit,
  • number of rewards obtained…etc.

All the results are displayed in a Microsoft Excel compatible datasheet.