allPrimes
Pre-takeoff checklist
Thanks for asking. Intellectually stimulating, to say the least. More waiting, of course, but the TL;DR is that ultimately, he saw only good things in the testing.
In all, the testing took a little over 6 hours (not including a break for lunch), measuring a ton of stuff, many tests that must measure something relevant to cognition but I wasn't privvy to what all of them did measure. Others measured basic math and concentration (word problems, timed, no pencil and paper allowed), some measured concentration and reaction time (when the letter flashes momentarily on the black screen, click the space bar, but NOT when the letter is an "X"; close to 15 minutes of this, too!), motor skills (place your hand on the board and click the clicker as many time as possible in 10 seconds. Again. Again. Rest for 30 seconds. Again. Again. Repeat with your left hand.), vocabulary. Lots of stuff. As others have written elsewhere, if there weren't so much riding on it (for me, the realization of a life-long dream, for others a career), it would have actually been fun.
Playing with blocks. Matching cards whose matching logic changes periodically. Identify what some pictures were. Identify what makes two words the same. Lots of interesting and frankly, mentally challenging tasks. My favorite, though, was doc reads a list of 20 or so random words. Which ones do you remember? They read the same list again. Which ones do you remember? They read it a third time. Which ones do you remember? Now they read a new list of 20 words. Which words do you remember from the new list but tell them no words from the first list. Now tell them which words you remember from first list but none from the second.
There was also some symbol coding. Numbers 1-6 all have a random symbol associated with each. There are pages and pages of numbers and you have to match the correct symbol to the correct number. Do as many as you can in some time limit. One of the more challenging I found was listen to a recorded voice say a number followed by a second number. Add the two together and tell the doc. Recorded voice says another number. The numbers don't slow down. Add that to the second number and tell the doc. Not a running total but a + b = i, then b + c = j then c + d = k...n + nx. Damn hard. First round of that was at one speed and the second round was about twice as fast.
The Cogsceen AE had some similar tests to the manually-administered tests and some that were completely different and some that tested "task saturation" (i.e., keep a thing centered with your non-dominant hand while also identifying if the two alphanumeric strings are the same or different with your right hand, and more). The suite of 13 sub-tests was a little over an hour of "GO AS FAST AS YOU CAN BUT MAKE NO MISTAKES." The last part of the day was completion of the 560+ question MMPI battery. Upon completion (because it's computerized, the test is scored automatically), the doc walked in to the office and said matter of factly "it looks like you have problems with authority."
I asked the doc for a post-game analysis. Although he can't write the final report until he gets my medical file from the FAA (which he'll poke people in OKC about; apparently, he has "connections"), he said (to paraphrase) "you were above average in the general population, above average in the age-adjusted population, and above average in the pilot population. I don't see any aeromedically-significant cognitive issues that would prevent the FAA from allowing you to have a medical certificate." That's good! He mentioned that because the FAA only asked me to do this one portion of the HIMS protocol, he thinks it's a good sign that after his report (provided no surprises from my FAA medical record) and after my AME sends in my packet of stuff, that should be all they need to make a decision. He mentioned that only when he sees equivocal results in the cognitive screening does the FAA ask for anything more if they've already only asked for the neuropsych. Given he saw no issues, he's hopeful that they'll have all they need (provided my AME has a similar positive opinion after their exam).
Hooray for me! Now it's just more waiting.
