What is Fluid Reasoning?

Fluid Reasoning Skills are another common cognitive area assessed during your child’s comprehensive psychoeducational or neurodevelopmental evaluation. To learn more about how this compares to other cognitive areas, including verbal comprehension, check out this blog. Fluid Reasoning skills are a foundational and important set of cognitive skills that aid in your child’s ability to problem solve with new information. Consider fluid reasoning your child’s “problem solving” capacity. Not only is it particularly relevant to nearly all aspects of your child’s academic, socio-emotional, and day-t0-day interactions, it also aids in their ability to find solutions and problem solve into adulthood.

To reduce the psychological jargon or lengthy explanations regarding broad and narrow abilities about human intelligence, here are a few ways to understand your child’s Fluid Reasoning performance scores, as well as the implications it may have on their functioning in home, school, and in the community.

What is the Fluid Reasoning Index on the WPPSI-IV or WISC-V?

• The Fluid Reasoning Index on the Wechsler Preschool & Primary Scale of Intelligence- Fourth Edition (WPPSI-V) or Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children- Fifth Edition (WISC-V) provides a snapshot of your child’s ability to problem solve with unfamiliar information or while navigating new situations. More specifically, it is your child’s ability to think beyond the facts by making connections to prior knowledge or by linking common patterns, concepts, or rules. Consider it your child’s ability to “think outside of the box,” by tapping into their previous knowledge, applying concepts, and identifying patterns.

What are Fluid Reasoning Skills?

• In general, Fluid Reasoning skills aid in your child’s ability to detect underlying concepts or relationships between topics/ideas in order to problem solve. You can consider it your child’s “Rubick’s Cube” or “Puzzle Solving” knowledge and their ability to think abstractly. While you or your child may not be able to complete a Rubik’s Cube, the concept is similar. Some people try their hardest to solve, yet others learn a good algorithm and can solve with ease. Fluid Reasoning taps into your child’s ability to process information efficiently, by analyzing patterns. Fluid Reasoning correlates with other aspects of intelligence, meaning it taps into aspects of your child’s visual processing, comprehension of verbal concepts and facts, as well as the efficient application and syncing of this knowledge. As the name implies, for your child to think “fluidly,” they may need to problem solve by going back and forth between concepts, ideas, and patterns. In order to be a fluid thinker in novel situations, your child’s brain must make connections, think creatively, and use inductive (bottom up) and/or deductive (top down) reasoning strategies to work through a problem. One way to think about Fluid Reasoning is through the example of “If A= B and B=C, then C=?” to help you navigate something new. There are many factors that can influence your child’s performance on Fluid Reasoning tasks, including executive functioning skills (e.g., sustained attention, cognitive flexibility, efficiency, frustration tolerance), responsiveness to feedback, patterns of intellectual skills, as well as other aspects of language/cognitive functions, including visual processing, working memory, or processing speed.

How does a psychologist assess Fluid Reasoning Skills?

• Psychologists or trained examiners can use a range of tools to assess your child’s Fluid Reasoning skills. Best practice typically includes use of several standardized tools. Some of the most common standardized cognitive tools used in the field include the Wechsler Intelligence Tests, such as the WPPSI-IV (ages 3-7), WISC-V (ages 6-16), and the WAIS-IV (ages 16-90), as well as the Woodcock Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities (WJ-IV Cog). There are many factors involved in creating a testing plan, as well as the tools used, which are related to your examiners specialty, training, and the referral question. Fluid Reasoning skills can also be examined in more depth through informal measures, school performance, clinical observation during problem solving tasks, as well as through use of other neuropsychological instruments.

What do Fluid Reasoning scores in the “Average Range” mean?

• If your child performs in the Average range, this demonstrates evidence that they have developmentally typical reasoning skills. They can utilize instruction and feedback effectively, improve performance through practice, and apply general or specific concepts to problem solve with new information just like that of many other kid’s their age. These skills can contribute to their academic mastery, particular in their ability to think outside of the box and connect seemingly unconnected ideas, such as linking math concepts of division with science topics about cells. Without any other barriers or learning differences, these children generally have the capacity to learn efficiently in school and can build upon their knowledge to learn new things in creative ways.

What do Fluid Reasoning scores above the “Average Range” mean?

• High Fluid Reasoning performance scores typically encompass a child who can make informed decisions quickly and creatively. They may also detect academic, social, or cognitive patterns that are not automatically recognizable to other children their age. Your child may communicate and express their knowledge in out of the box ways and may appear older and/or more efficient than their age in terms of problem-based learning. If your child has strong fluid thinking, they may also be misunderstood and/or seen has having a hard time staying focused with straight forward or “easy” tasks. For example, if they attend a traditional structured class setting and are learning math, they may make connections between science and social studies as they are learning a new math concept. Making connections across the brain and learning this manner is wonderful, however in some settings it can be challenging if misunderstood. While teacher’s may appreciate their depth in understanding and insight, they may be told they are “off task” or not focusing on the specific (and possibly too straight forward) task at hand. They may get excited and call out their insights and/or struggle to focus on a task that seems too easy or not challenging. Individuals with high Fluid Reasoning skills likely excel in popular games like Sudoku, Mystery Solve, and/or Chess.

What do Fluid Reasoning scores below the “Average Range” mean?

• Consistently, low Fluid Reasoning performance scores may indicate poorly or underdeveloped fluid thinking skills compared to same aged peers through the lens of standardized assessment. This may encompass a child who struggles with inferential questions, appears confused with if/then concepts, or benefits from corrective feedback throughout instruction to make links. While it does not mean they cannot problem solve, you child may seem confused, distracted, or overwhelmed when needing to juggle multiple bits of information at a time when problem solving, require more concrete/direct links between ideas, and repetition for new concepts. Since Fluid Reasoning skills are highly utilized in school settings, they may need additional skill building with aspects of learning in school, such as when learning new math procedures, picking up on nuances during listening comprehension tasks, reading comprehension (specifically for inferential questions), and expressive writing tasks. There can be many factors that influence Fluid Reasoning performance other than pure weaknesses in this area, including testing error, underlying neurodevelopmental weaknesses, difficulty with performing under timed pressure, anxiety, and other cultural implications/factors. Therefore, it is important to talk more in-depth with the examiner.

How do Fluid Reasoning Skills affect learning?

• Fluid Reasoning skills (and the tools that assess them) may not be as impacted by outside learning/enrichment opportunities compared to other cognitive areas, as this brain function taps into your child’s ability to navigate primarily unfamiliar situations. However, enriching learning environments, fluid school environments, and other cultural implications can influence skills and are not typically captured during standardized testing. Remember, Fluid Reasoning taps into several brain areas. Thus, it is important to think beyond a score when examining Fluid Reasoning skills as fluidity with problem solving can be impacted across many layers, such as your child’s efficiency under timed pressure, ability to navigate stress when analyzing details, and recall. Your child may have fluid thinking, but might struggle with efficiency when trying to see the “forest through the trees.” Research supports that Fluid Reasoning skills are highly linked to reading comprehension, expressive writing, math problem solving, quantitative reasoning, science, and any class where making connections and reasoning is of high importance towards success. Fluid reasoning is our “puzzle solving” brain, so high skills in this area can lead your child to interests in puzzles, “brain busters,” or detective work. School settings tap into these skills regularly. Thus, if your child has low Fluid Reasoning skills, it is important to provide them with additional opportunities to build these skills, as well as means to support their flexibility with thinking. For more information about school-based strategies, check out this blog.

What are some ways to enhance my child’s Fluid Reasoning Skills?

• Providing opportunities for peer based learning can be helpful. The developing brain learns well through use of peer models or peer tutors as it expands your child’s perspective on problem solving in both academic and play-based environments. When your child is able to have more “models” to problem solve, it increases opportunity, flexibility, and creativity in the future for similar problems.

• Improve enrichment and learning opportunities that extend slightly beyond your child’s specific interests. If reading about history is not of interest to your child, help them find a way to link the topic to their favorite basketball team or other general concepts.

• Increase reciprocal teaching strategies, such as “I like the way you approached that, I thought about it this way,” or “I am thinking about solving the problem this way, can you find another way to teach me?”

• Use review, repetition, and corrective feedback to promote transfer of ideas. Rather than clustering single concepts (e.g., division in math vs. cell development in science), provide opportunities for your child to link new topics with previously learned (and solidly used/understood) concepts when studying.

• Help your child link new topics with background knowledge. When children struggle with fluid reasoning, they tend to benefit from making connections to previous learned ideas.

• Increase your child’s tolerance (whether frustration or anxiety) with novelty. Model use of problem solving out loud to help them navigate new or unfamiliar situations.

• Increase kinesthetic and play-based learning. Get Outside!

• Encourage your child to talk aloud and/or draw out their ideas in visual forms. Children who struggle with condensing many ideas or making connections between ideas benefit from tapping into other brain strengths.

• Use of visual referents for abstract or content heavy tasks, particularly with written expression or when studying. Cluster paragraphs in circles or draw arrows to link ideas on study materials.

• Keep it fun. There are many family friendly games that tap into Fluid Reasoning skills. Include any individual or family game that involves puzzles, problem solving, mysteries, or hands-on ways to acquire and express their knowledge in a multi-sensory, fun, and non-threatening way. Some family friendly options include Brain Busters!, Sudoku, Chess, or tabletop puzzles.

Have questions or looking to learn more information? Contact Dr. Bobal today!