Department of Human Learning and Development, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA.
Br J Educ Psychol. 2019 Sep;89(3):416-428. doi: 10.1111/bjep.12264. Epub 2019 Jan 11.
The term individual differences refers to the physical, behavioral, cognitive, social, and emotional attributes that make each human unique. Late adolescence to young adulthood represents a time of significant neurobiological and cognitive transformations that contribute further to human variability. Those transformations include an increase in the white matter of the brain accompanied by an increased capacity for higher-order thinking, reasoning, decision-making, and selfcontrol. These capacities fall under the category of executive functions.
The purpose of this article is to overview one particular executive function, relational reasoning; to consider its significance to college students' learning and performance; and to argue for its inclusion in assessment programs within higher education.
Relational reasoning can be defined as the ability to discern meaningful patterns within any informational stream. Through an orchestrated program of research, four forms of relational reasoning have been identified that reflect perceived similarities (analogical), discrepancies (anomalous), contradictions (antinomous), and contrasts (antithetical). These four forms have been documented in studies of doctors diagnosing cases, science and mathematics teachers providing instruction, and engineering students designing new products. These manifestations have also formed the structure of formal measures of relational reasoning that have been shown to be psychometrically sound indicators of this executive function.
This article closes with an argument for the inclusion of relational reasoning in performance assessments designed for higher education. Consistent with views of competence as a continuum, it is argued that this inclusion should encompass the measurement of relational reasoning both as an underlying general competence and as a component of domain-specific performance.
个体差异是指使每个人独一无二的身体、行为、认知、社会和情感属性。从青春期晚期到成年早期，是神经生物学和认知发生重大转变的时期，这进一步增加了人类的可变性。这些转变包括大脑白质的增加，伴随着更高层次思维、推理、决策和自我控制能力的提高。这些能力属于执行功能范畴。
本文旨在概述一种特定的执行功能，关系推理；考虑其对大学生学习和表现的意义；并主张将其纳入高等教育中的评估计划。
关系推理可以定义为在任何信息流中辨别有意义模式的能力。通过一系列精心策划的研究，已经确定了四种关系推理形式，反映了感知到的相似性（类比）、差异（异常）、矛盾（矛盾）和对比（对立）。这些形式在医生诊断病例、科学和数学教师提供教学以及工程学生设计新产品的研究中都有记录。这些表现形式也构成了关系推理的正式衡量标准，这些标准已被证明是这种执行功能的心理测量学上可靠的指标。
本文最后提出了在为高等教育设计的绩效评估中纳入关系推理的理由。根据能力是连续体的观点，有人认为，这种纳入应该包括对关系推理的测量，既作为一般能力的基础，也作为特定领域表现的组成部分。
