Abstract
In our country, there is a need for culture-specific scales to evaluate the cognitive skills of individuals such as abstraction and reasoning. In this study, it was aimed to develop the Proverbs Scale, which is used to evaluate the abstraction skills of individuals, and to examine its psychometric properties in healthy volunteers. The Standardized Mini-Mental Test, Montreal Cognitive Assessment Scale, Kitchen Picture Test, WAIS-R Comprehension and Similarities subscales and the Proverbs Scale were applied to 122 healthy volunteers, 56% (n=68) of whom were men and between the ages of 23-83 (x̅age = 49.26, SD = 14.73). In the exploratory factor analysis of the Proverbs Scale, a multiple factor structure was obtained. It was determined that the Proverbs Scale scores were positively correlated with the WAIS-R Comprehension and Similarity subscales and the Kitchen Picture Test's Judgment subscale, which are used to measure abstraction and reasoning skills. The internal consistency of the scale was moderate (Cronbach alpha=.76), and the inter-rater reliability was high (r=.98). The results of this study indicate that the 15-item Proverbs Scale is a valid and reliable tool for evaluating abstraction skills.
Keywords
proverbs, abstracting, executive function, validity study