(TOSR) Test of Semantic Reasoning

Information obtained from the TOSR provides educators, psychologists, and speech-language pathologists with information about children and adolescents’ basic receptive vocabulary knowledge, as well as higher order thinking and reasoning in the semantic domain. It assesses breadth (the number of lexical entries one has) and depth (the extent of semantic representation for each known word) of vocabulary knowledge.

The TOSR assesses three narrow abilities defined in the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theory of cognitive abilities: Lexical Knowledge (VL): the extent of vocabulary that can be understood in terms of correct word meanings; Induction (I): the ability to discover the underlying characteristic that governs a problem or a set of materials, and General Sequential Reasoning (RG): the ability to start with stated rules, premises, or conditions, and to engage in one or more steps to reach a solution to a novel problem.

The TOSR includes 90 sets of four high-quality color photographs that reflect a vocabulary word in a variety of contexts. Age-related starting points and ceilings ensure that only a subset of items will need to be administered. Scoring is straightforward, generally taking less than 5 minutes. Raw scores are reported as standard scores, percentile ranks, and age equivalents.