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Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling, 2023.65:402-413
Conceptualization of the Reasoning-Test “Reality-contradicting Syllogisms”
Abstract:
Considering so-called reasoning tests, almost only test concepts with figural item contents are practically in use – this being in Raymond B. Cattell’s tradition of aiming for culture-fair tests. However, as Kubinger (2023a) recently suggested there are six categories of reasoning tests, i.e. a two times three classification of fluid vs. crystallized facets and lexical vs. numerical vs. figural contents. And especially the combination of fluid facets with lexical contents is hardly available to a practitioner. Though, there is at least the approach to use the formal-logical principle of a “syllogism”, which will be re-activated in this paper. In contrast to a lot of Srp’s items of her test (Srp, 1994) now each item is constructed in such manner that at least one premise as well as the conclusion contradict the actual facts (the material truth) or, alternatively, it has no reference to reality by using meaningless, freely invented “words” as acting terms. A first draft of such a test Reality-contradicting Syllogisms with 20 items has been psychometrically analyzed according to the Rasch model. Although only two of the items have to be deleted in order to achieve a-posteriori model conformity, no insight could be gained about which specific components in the composition of an item are problematic so that it captures something different from the other items. For now, these items’ non-conformity with the Rasch model is simply be attributed to chance. But for deeper understanding the challenge of syllogisms as a psychological test’s task, further research is needed. Some hints for doing so are given in this paper.
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