Mental Ability Assessment Response

Mental Ability. I’m full of it. I love these kinds of tests. We took the [please insert name here] non-verbal assessment of mental ability. Loved it. I love puzzles like this. Which shape comes next, which number follows in this sequence, if you fold this piece of paper this way and that way, what will it look like when you are finished? But, poor me, I had to leave early and could not find out what my test score was. I think I got them all right, but that’s just my arrogance coming through. But it’s not about me, is it? Nope. It’s about the kids. This kind of test makes you think. Makes your brain hurt. I have the stamina for it and I enjoy it, so I won’t complain or give up. Do it all day long, doesn’t bother me. But a lot of the students who come my way are put off by tests like this. Well, they are put off by problems that do not have immediate, clear answers. Put off by questions that require extended, multi-layered thinking.

Why is that?

Are they stupid? Who could not enjoy a test like this?

Okay. The ones who reject this type of non-verbal mental ability test probably lack a certain degree of spatial thinking. That, to me, is what most of this is about. Can you imagine a three-dimensional object taken from a two-dimensional piece of paper and rotate it in your head? Are you willing to spend time looking back and forth and back and forth among three our four different objects to figure out what the pattern is? How many permutations can you hold within your brain at the same time? I can see this angering some personalities.

We also looked at a few verbal assessments. Questions with words. Still, here we had number sequences, odd-man-out questions (which of these objects does not belong, like in the Sesame Street song). I like this type of assessment less, but will still dedicate myself to it . . . but here I go talking about myself again. Okay. The inclusion of words and concepts introduces an unmistakable bias to the testing procedure. The ideas and concepts familiar to a farming community are, possibly, entirely foreign to someone raised in Orlando, Florida amid the glitz and glamour of Universal Studios and Disneyworld!

Let’s go wordless. No bias . . . or maybe they don’t have shapes like that in Omaha.