Purpose of the Verbal Reasoning subtest

Verbal comprehension is an important skill we ask of our clinicians. Central to the assessment
in Verbal Reasoning is to test your ability to interpret information in a meaningful way to
arrive at conclusions based on logical reasoning.
Being able to read complex texts under pressure is part of the everyday life of a doctor even
as a medical student. rom reading basic medical science textbooks! "ournal articles on new
research to complex treatment algorithms in clinical literature! medical professionals are
re#uired to read! understand and comprehend sentence structure used in all rational discourse.
$t the frontiers of medical science! medicine becomes a clinical practice. %here is no hard&
and&fast approach to all clinical problems in the population. Being able to read the latest
ambiguous medical literature to provide the best for your patients is what is re#uired of the
best doctors in the field every day. 'ne must take all manner of data and written information
and piece together in a coherent and logical fashion so that doctors can arrive at a reasoned
"udgement call.
%he need to draw conclusions from published research is re#uired to conduct your own
clinical practice. (edicine is a constantly changing field! especially as more drugs and other
treatments become available on the )*+. $lthough the ma"ority of basic science remains
unrefuted! there will always be debate about how best to treat patients. $nd new research is
constantly giving clinicians more to mull over! then to decide! for example! which psychiatric
drug is best for their patients. $ssimilating! and then understanding the logical conclusions
within each research publication is important to provide the best for your patients. $s well as
reading up on clinical research! a doctor is re#uired to draw conclusions from talking to
patients themselves. (aking assumptions and,or following illogically from the information
available can have disastrous conse#uences for your patients.
+o as obvious as it may be that reading in itself is important! at the higher end of medical
practice! an excellent grasp of the -nglish language and how it is used to form arguments is
very important. $nother admissions test .i.e. B($%! the Bio(edical $dmissions %est/! has a
component which re#uires a certain standard of critical thinking. 0ust because this is a
different test and it is not as rigorously tested in the 12C$%! does not mean that critical
thinking is not important in medicine.
Purpose of the 3uantitative Reasoning subtest
4octors see figures and digits all their professional lives .not "ust in the 12C$%5/. rom
prescribing the correct drug doses to carrying out clinical audits. Basic numeracy is in fact a
prere#uisite in all highly&skilled professions familiarity with numbers and application of the
basic rules of arithmetic provide great utility for living in the modern world.
Particularly though! the bedrock of all science is in statistical data. 'bservations in the natural
world are corroborated by numbers so that they can be compared against the history of other
experiments. or example! recently a study had collected data on about 677 brain donations.
8t showed that people with 9more education are more likely to : stave off symptoms of
dementia;.
%o come to such a conclusion! a scientist,statistician would have needed to! amongst other
things! collect a large enough sample! made sure the data collected from sub"ects were
relevant! and performed all sorts of statistical calculations.
8n a way! this is what is asked of you in the 3uantitative Reasoning subtest. <ou are given
data regarding a certain topic= for example! a table showing the number of different colours of
cars that passed a school over a week. %hen asked to scout out specific information> how
many red cars drove past the school on %uesday? 'r other #uestions styled as problems!
which re#uire you to perform specific calculations.
Purpose $bstract Reasoning subtest
-ssentially the third subtest in 12C$%! $bstract Reasoning! is a categori@ation task mirroring
much of the same process undertaken by doctors in hospitals and general practices
nationwide every day.
(uch of science is abstraction. %heorems and laws are generated about highly complex
patterns of the wider world= these theories! laws or hypotheses are simplifications made of
elementary concepts. %hey allow us to understand the world and how things relate to each
other. *owever! abstraction from observation is only half the process. or most of us we need
to derive a purpose from such high&brow thinking.
Ae apply simple rules to the world! for example! in (athematics> the rules of arithmetic
.assessed in the 3uantitative Reasoning subtest/. %hese basic mathematical rules have
allowed us to apply into real&world applications. or example! engineers as long ago as in
$ncient -gypt had utili@ed these simple rules to build the pyramids. $lso theori@ing in
medicine is critical= no more so than when it comes to the diagnosis of ailments.
1nlike medical professionals though it does not re#uire you to know any specific medical
knowledge nor will you benefit from understanding language nuances or cultural norms. or
example! you will not be asked to separate groups of animals as pets and animals as food
depending where you come from a horse may be in either category.
*owever! the similarity arises in the process. %he subtest re#uires you to sort the relevant
abstract patterns from the distracting anomalies and arrive at a hypothesis,rule. 4iagnosis is a
similar process. Ahat follows is a #uick and simple example to illustrate this.
Purpose 4ecision $nalysis subtest
%he practice of science is through inductive reasoning! not deductive. %his practice is a
systematic goal to gather evidence! knowledge or observations about nature and summarise
them into laws and theories. %hese laws are not perfect after all! they are our best
interpretation of the observations we have collected.
8n fact! medical science is an excellent example of this. 8f you;ve ever watched an episode of
9*ouse (4;! you;ll appreciate the fallibility of the diagnostic process. Complex biological
systems are hard to decipher and interpret into what we can easily understand. %here is great
abundance of anomalies in our observations of the human body. +tudies into the efficacy of a
particular drug! for example! may only result in reams of statistical data suggesting that the
drug only works some of the time. +o as a doctor you will never have perfect data! or perfect
knowledge to make a decision with a skill that you learn to better with experience. 8t is for
this reason that doctors are said to 9practise; medicine. %herefore it is re#uired of physicians
to be good decision makers from the start after all their decisions may cost lives.
$lthough in the 4ecision $nalysis subtest you will need to apply certain grammatical rules
and logic to your answers! this subtest assesses your ability to make good "udgements from
imperfect information. 8n some case! the correct answer will not be perfect but will be
considered the best suitable choice given the options given.
Purpose +ituational 0udgement subtest
%he +ituational 0udgement test was a new addition to the 12C$% test that initially started in
test phase from B7CB= however! from B7CD onwards it will be used to measure student;s
professional attributes with respect to medical and dental professionals. 8t has been used for
many years in the assessment of professional #ualities re#uired by a number of occupations=
for example! the 1nited +tates; ederal Bureau of 8nvestigation .i.e. B8/ has used this
assessment for decades as well as the Police force. %his assessment method has also recently
been used in the medical profession as part of Eeneral Practitioner vocational training
assessments.
Research has demonstrated consistently! when appropriately designed! that the situational
"udgement tests have significant validity in predicting professional role&related attributes in
future "ob roles. %he +0%s in the 12C$% present scenarios drawn from a real&life work or
study context and ask students to gauge the appropriateness a list of actions or importance of
certain issues. %hey therefore attempt to assess aspects of social cognition that are not often
measured in traditional selection test such as verbal! #uantitative or abstract reasoning.