Reactive stress tolerance and reaction speed in the adaptive determination test as predictors of cadets' combat training performance

Military training increasingly requires rapid and accurate decisions under high cognitive load, making executive functions and performance stability under stress operationally relevant. This study examined whether indices derived from the adaptive Determination Test (DT) − reactive stress tolerance (RST), median reaction time (MRT), and incorrect reactions (IR) − are associated with cadets' combat training performance. Ninety-one cadets (71 men, 20 women; M age = 21.93, SD = 1.47) from a Polish military academy completed the DT. Combat training performance was operationalized as the composite mean of scores obtained across ten checkpoints completed during a field task referred to as the “tactical loop” (MTP; ω = 0.60). Spearman correlations and hierarchical linear regression (controlling for age and sex) were applied, with sensitivity analyses to assess robustness. Higher MTP was associated with higher RST (ρ = 0.38; p < .001) and faster MRT (ρ = −0.41; p < .001), whereas IR was not associated with MTP. In the hierarchical regression model, DT indices explained additional variance in MTP beyond age and sex (ΔR 2 = 0.143, p = .009), although individual DT predictors did not reach conventional statistical significance when entered simultaneously. MRT showed the strongest partial association with MTP (β = −0.30, p = .069). These findings suggest that adaptive DT indices capturing response speed and correct responding under dynamically adjusted stimulus load are meaningfully related to cadets' training outcomes, although their effects partly overlap and should not be interpreted as fully independent predictors.