Thinking Skills Explained: The 15 Question Types Your Child Will See

Of all four sections on the Selective exam, Thinking Skills is the one that catches families off guard. Maths makes sense to parents — you've done maths, you can recognise a fractions question. Reading makes sense too — comprehension is comprehension. But Thinking Skills isn't taught at school in any structured way, and when parents first sit down with their child over a sample question, half the time the parent doesn't know how to solve it either.

That's the honest starting point. Thinking Skills is genuinely unfamiliar. It's also entirely learnable, and the kids who do well on this section are not "naturally logical" — they're trained. Let me walk you through every question type your child will encounter, what each one is actually testing, and how to recognise it.

What Thinking Skills is testing

Thinking Skills on the Selective test is adapted from a long-running ACER assessment framework. It measures what psychologists call "fluid reasoning" — the ability to take novel information and apply logic to reach a conclusion, without relying on memorised content knowledge. Your child doesn't need to know any particular facts. They need to be able to think carefully with the information given.

There are roughly 40 questions in 40 minutes. That's one question per minute. It's fast. Most children who do poorly on this section do so because they run out of time, not because they got the questions they attempted wrong.

The questions fall into three broad families, with specific types inside each. Here's the full map.

Family 1: Deductive Logic (about 30% of the section)

1. Drawing Conclusions

You're given a short passage with a few premises, and asked what logically follows. The trap is that the answer options include conclusions that could be true, or probably are true, but only one must be true given the premises. Kids who are fast readers often pick the answer that feels right, rather than the one that's strictly entailed.

The skill to teach: slow reading of premises, and checking each answer against "does this have to be true?"

2. Logical Deduction

Classic "if A then B, if B then C" chains. The challenge is holding multiple conditional statements in mind at once. Younger children struggle because they try to solve these in their head — the fix is teaching them to sketch a simple diagram on scratch paper, turning the logic into a picture.

3. Syllogisms

"All cats are mammals. All mammals have lungs. Therefore...?" These look simple until the examiner uses abstract categories (All A are B, no B are C, therefore...). The trick is recognising the underlying structure — once you see that "All X are Y" is just a subset relationship, you can draw circles and the answer is obvious.

4. Truth and Liar Puzzles

Five people make statements. Two are lying. Who committed the crime? These are fun, but they eat time. The efficient method: systematically assume each person is the liar and check for consistency. Most kids try to guess and get lost.

5. Data Sufficiency

You're given a question and two pieces of information. Do you have enough to answer? Is one piece alone enough? Are both needed? The skill here is very specific — you're not solving the problem, you're assessing whether you could. Children who love solving puzzles often try to solve it anyway and waste time.

Family 2: Argument & Evidence (about 30% of the section)

6. Evaluating Hypotheses

You're given a scenario and a proposed explanation. Which additional piece of evidence would most strengthen the explanation? Which would most weaken it? This is the bread-and-butter of scientific thinking, and it's rarely taught at primary school.

The skill: asking "what would this evidence mean for the hypothesis?" before picking. Many kids choose an answer that's on-topic but doesn't actually move the needle on the hypothesis.

7. Strengthening and Weakening Arguments

Similar to the above, but applied to everyday arguments rather than scientific hypotheses. "Alex argues that the new bus timetable is working. Which of the following best supports Alex's argument?" The key is separating evidence that supports the conclusion from evidence that merely mentions the topic.

8. Detecting Reasoning Errors

A flawed argument is presented. What's the flaw? Common flaws: circular reasoning, false cause (correlation vs causation), hasty generalisation, attacking the person not the argument. Once a child learns to name these flaws, they spot them quickly. Without training, they look right past them.

9. Matching Arguments

An argument is given. Which of the five options has the same logical structure? The content might be totally different — one is about dogs, the other about trains — but the reasoning shape is the same. This is an abstraction exercise. Very teachable, almost untrained at school.

10. Relevant vs Irrelevant Evidence

Given a question, which piece of information is actually relevant to answering it? This sounds obvious but regularly catches kids out, because the "irrelevant" evidence is often topically related but doesn't address the question.

Family 3: Analytical Reasoning (about 40% of the section)

11. Pattern Matrices

A 3x3 grid of shapes with one square missing. Your child identifies the pattern (rotation, colour change, count, overlay) and picks the shape that fits. These are the most visual questions on the exam and often the quickest once the pattern is seen. But there are maybe 5 common pattern types, and if you haven't practised all of them, the unfamiliar ones take forever.

12. Figure Series

A sequence of 4 or 5 shapes. What comes next? Same idea as matrices but linear. The pattern is usually a combination of two transformations (rotate 90° AND add one element, for instance). Training the eye to see both transformations at once is the specific skill.

13. Spatial Reasoning & 3D Transformations

Nets of cubes, folded paper, mirror reflections. Your child has to mentally manipulate 3D objects. Some kids are naturally strong here; others need a lot of practice. Good news: this is one of the few cognitive skills that genuinely improves with deliberate practice — I've seen students go from terrible to confident in 2–3 weeks of daily drilling.

14. Seating Arrangements & Constraint Puzzles

"Six friends are sitting in a row. Ali is next to Ben but not next to Chen. Dee is between Eva and Fay." Work out the arrangement. These are genuinely hard for kids the first time. The only method that works is drawing a diagram and filling in constraints one at a time. Without a systematic approach, they spiral into guessing.

15. Finding Procedures & Novel Problem Solving

The exam's "wildcard" category. Your child is shown a novel rule or procedure (sometimes invented for the question) and has to apply it correctly. Example: "In Zorg arithmetic, 3 ⊕ 5 = 7 and 4 ⊕ 2 = 5. What is 6 ⊕ 3?" Your child has to infer the rule and apply it. These reward careful reading and systematic testing, and punish jumping to conclusions.

How to actually teach Thinking Skills

Three principles, in order of importance.

Principle 1: Name the question type before attempting it

The single biggest improvement I see in students is when they learn to pause for 5 seconds at the start of each question and say (silently) "This is a deductive logic question" or "This is a pattern matrix." Naming the type triggers the right method. Without it, kids apply a generic approach to every question and waste time rediscovering the strategy each time.

Principle 2: Draw diagrams

On every logic puzzle, constraint problem, or syllogism — draw. Circles for sets. Grids for seating. Arrows for conditionals. Kids who try to hold these in their head fail more than kids who put pen to paper. This is a trainable habit and honestly, many adults don't do it either.

Principle 3: Timing drills, not just practice questions

Your child needs to know what one minute per question feels like. Practising 40 questions in 40 minutes is different from practising 40 questions at leisure. The timer is part of the skill. Introduce it early.

What doesn't work for Thinking Skills

• Memorising past questions. ACER doesn't reuse questions. Familiarity with the question types matters; familiarity with specific questions does not.
• "Brain training" apps. Lumosity and similar products have been shown in research not to transfer to unrelated cognitive tasks. Don't substitute them for real practice.
• Doing Thinking Skills only once a week. This section rewards frequency. Five questions a day for 90 days beats 45 questions once a week, every time.
• Expecting rapid improvement without structure. Children who improve fastest are the ones working through a planned sequence — not just doing random practice questions until exam day.

One final thought

Thinking Skills is the section where the biggest improvements are possible in the shortest time, provided your child practises with structure and feedback. I have seen students go from 40% accuracy to 75%+ in a term. I have never seen a child do that in Reading or Maths. The leverage is real.

But it requires someone guiding the process — pointing out the question type, debriefing errors by category, introducing strategies before dumping the child into hundreds of problems. Done well, it's one of the most satisfying sections to teach. Done badly, it's where families waste the most money on the wrong kind of practice.