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Reasoning is a higher-order “thinking” skill which requires one to be able to discriminate between important and unimportant stimuli. Reasoning can be broken down into two types: verbal and nonverbal (Power and D’Amato 2018). Verbal reasoning involves the intake and processing of information presented in a word-based manner, whereas nonverbal reasoning involves the processing and utilization of visually spatially mediated information. This discrimination of stimuli is essential for one to be able to make inferences, choose the most appropriate meaning, sort or group objects, or apply learned information to other situations based upon an important information. Reasoning can be psychometrically assessed through tasks such as those involving pattern recognition, visual-spatial manipulation, mathematical logic, or reading comprehension.
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Goodwin, D. M. (1989). A dictionary of neuropsychology. New York: Springer.
Power, E. M., & D’Amato, R. C. (2018). Should our future include the integration of evidence-based neuropsychological services into school settings? In D. P. Flanagan & E. M. McDonough (Eds.), Contemporary intellectual assessment: Theories, tests, and issues (4th ed.). New York: Guilford.
Reitan, R. M., & Wolfson, D. (1993). The Halsteid-Reitan neuropsychological test battery: Theory and clinical interpretation (2nd ed.). Tuscon: Neuropsychology Press.
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Schrader, A., D’Amato, R.C. (2017). Reasoning. In: Kreutzer, J., DeLuca, J., Caplan, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56782-2_1483-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56782-2_1483-2
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