What is impaired abstract thinking?



In students with brain injury, impaired abstract thinking is frequently associated with reduced foresight, judgment, insight, reasoning, creativity, problem solving, and mental flexibility.

What is considered abstract thinking?

Abstract thinking is the ability to consider concepts beyond what we observe physically. Recognizing patterns, analyzing ideas, synthesizing information, solving problems, and creating things all involve abstract thinking.

What are some examples of abstract thoughts?

For example, a concrete thought would be thinking about your own dog. Abstract thoughts would be thinking about dogs in general, their relationship with your dog and with you, and how dogs fit into the bigger picture of your life and the world in general. Another example may make more sense to engineers.

What is an example of abstract reasoning?





The ability to understand the relationships between verbal and non-verbal ideas is also a part of the abstract reasoning. For example, using statistics to predict the outcome of an election is an example of abstract reasoning applied to a real-world problem.

How do you test for abstract thinking?

To successfully complete abstract reasoning tests, you need to be able to think creatively and use lateral thinking to solve novel problems. You need to see the relationships between shapes and figures, identify rules and similarities, and quickly apply these to identify the answer.