Examinees score higher on academic aptitude test verbal reasoning questions with proximal than with distal content¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2023 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Accuracy was higher on proximal than on distal verbal reasoning questions in a large corpus of real AAT data. → Britt Hadar 2023

Evidence¶

Britt Hadar 2023¶

Britt Hadar, Maayan Katzir, Sephi Pumpian, Tzur Karelitz and Nira Liberman. (2023). Psychological proximity improves reasoning in academic aptitude tests. npj Science of Learning 8:10. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-023-00158-x

q2 · i? · causal · r2

Observational analysis of 41,209 examinees on publicly administered AATs from 2014–2017, with verbal reasoning questions coded as proximal or distal by two judges (r = 0.88). A GLMM showed "accuracy was higher with proximal than with distal questions" (means 0.71 vs. 0.68), p < 0.0001.

"Critically, accuracy was higher with proximal than with distal questions, B = −0.049, SE = 0.007, z = −6.80, p < 0.0001, ( M-proximal = 0.71, SE-proximal = 0.01, M-distal = 0.68, SE-distal = 0.01)."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• The proximal-content advantage on AAT questions is more pronounced for low-achieving examinees — related
• In the lab study, distance and relevance of question content did not significantly affect accuracy overall, while AAT score and working-memory capacity each improved it and intensified each other — related
• With logical structure held constant, proximity improves accuracy of low-achieving participants by 28% — related
• In a high-stakes field exam, proximity improved performance of low-achieving examinees only on questions containing irrelevant details — related