How SHL Verify Interactive Inductive Reasoning works
Verify Interactive Inductive Reasoning is the inductive test on SHL’s current list of cognitive assessments. SHL describes its content as shapes and alphanumeric sequences: you infer the rule and use it to predict what comes next. It allows 18 minutes for up to 15 questions, adapts to your answers and is designed to be sat unsupervised in one go on any device, including a phone. SHL pitches it at mid-level to senior roles.
SHL’s own example screens show two tasks. In one, three small images of a grid are followed by a question mark, and you tap cells in a large grid to colour them and build the fourth image. In the other, circles labelled with numbers and letters are scattered on the screen, a line already joins the first two, and you continue the line in sequence.
SHL also has an older multiple-choice inductive test in which you pick the next frame from a set of options, so check which one your invitation names. SHL says its interactive tests give credit for partly right answers; how is not published.
How to find the rule
Take the sequence apart before you build anything:
- In a grid, follow one colour at a time. Ask what changed from the first image to the second.
- Check that the same change explains the second image to the third. If it does not, look for a second rule running alongside.
- Apply the rule once more and build only that step.
- In a number and letter line, work out the number rule and the letter rule separately from the part already drawn.
- Stop where the sequence stops. Drawing past the end is an error, not extra credit.
Worked examples
Line: circles show 2, D, 4, F, 6 and H, scattered, with a line already joining 2 to D. The numbers go up by two and the letters skip one each time, so the line runs 2, D, 4, F, 6, H. Joining 2 to 4 directly would follow the numbers but break the alternation.
Grid: in a 4 by 4 grid, a green cell sits in the top-left corner in image 1, one cell to the right in image 2 and two cells to the right in image 3, while a purple cell stays in the bottom-right corner throughout. The green cell moves one cell right each time, so image 4 has it in the top-right corner and the purple cell where it was.
Tips for the real test
- Sit SHL’s free interactive inductive practice test, which gives you a report.
- At 18 minutes for up to 15 questions, you have about 70 seconds each.
- Expect letters and numbers as well as shapes.
- Name the change in words, such as “moves one right” or “turns a quarter”, before you tap. It stops you building a guess.
- If time is short, build the part you are sure of. SHL gives credit for partly right answers.
Practise Verify Interactive Inductive Reasoning on CogniPrep
Our Verify Interactive Inductive game always runs the full 15 questions on one 18-minute clock, mixing the two task types on SHL’s example screens: colouring grid cells green or purple to build the next image, and continuing a line through circles labelled with numbers and letters. Questions are generated fresh from our own templates, not taken from SHL. Each cell that matters and each link of the line counts as one part, and a link past the end of the sequence counts against you. A fully right answer makes the next question harder and one less than half right makes it easier, and the score weighs each mark by the level it was earned at. That ladder and the marking are ours, because SHL publishes neither. You cannot go back.