Logical Reasoning Ability Research Articles

Is clinical, musculoskeletal pain associated with poorer logical reasoning?

It has been hypothesized that pain disrupts system 2 processes (eg, working memory) presumed to underlie logical reasoning. A recent study examining the impact of experimentally induced pain on logical reasoning found no evidence of an effect. The aim of this study was to examine whether clinical pain, which is qualitatively different from experimental pain, would lower the ability to reason logically. Ninety-six participants completed a questionnaire containing 3 different logical reasoning tasks (the cognitive reflection test, the belief bias syllogisms task, and the conditional inference task), questions about pain variables (present pain intensity, pain intensity during the last 24 hours, the influence of pain on daily activities, pain duration, and pain persistence), questions about other pain-related states (anxiety, depression, and fatigue), and pain-relieving medication. Correlations between the logical reasoning tasks and the pain variables were calculated. For 2 of the 3 logical reasoning tasks (the cognitive reflection test and the belief bias syllogisms task), clinical pain was unrelated to logical reasoning. Performance on context-free logical reasoning showed a significant negative correlation with present pain intensity, but not with the other pain variables. This finding that logical reasoning ability is largely unrelated to clinical pain is highly consistent with previous research on experimentally induced pain. Pain should probably not constitute a significant barrier to logical reasoning in everyday life.

Fake News: Logical Reasoning Ability and Students Vulnerability

Logical reasoning ability refers to the students’ ability to understand logical work through concepts and problems. Logical reasoning is one of the fundamental skill that is used for effective thinking. Fake news is a spread of inaccurate information in the internet and other forms of media. It is made either to misinform or deceive the reader most inevitably the students. The researcher aims to assess the relationship between logical reasoning ability and students’ vulnerability towards fake news. There are 240 respondents to answer the given survey questionnaire. All grade 11 and grade 12 students in the strand of STEM, HUMSS, GAS, ABM and TVL-Drafting in Jagobiao National High School- Senior High School Department were requested to answer the questionnaire in rating scale. The methodology in this study is quantitative survey using a check-list and NCAE result to gather data. The data have been analyzed using chi-square to determine if there is an association between logical reasoning ability and students’ vulnerability towards fake news. The result showed that there are no significant association between logical reasoning ability and students vulnerability towards fake news. Based on these findings, it was recommended that the parents, teachers, and school should put their guard on their children for them not to be easily deceit by fake news. It has been recommended that they should provide facts to students and encourage them to combat against the spread of false information.

Development of early domain-specific and domain-general cognitive precursors of high and low math achievers in grade 6

ABSTRACT This study investigated from a longitudinal retrospective perspective what characterizes and predicts 6th graders (Mage = 12.95, SD = 0.27) with low (LMA) or high (HMA) math achievement concerning the development of early domain-specific and domain-general cognitive abilities. They were examined and compared to average achievers (n = 88) at four-time points from kindergarten (Mage = 6.58, SD = 0.36) to third grade (Mage = 9.53, SD = 0.33). The LMA (n = 27) or HMA (n = 41) children exhibited persistent multi-weakness and multi-strength profiles, respectively, present already prior to formal schooling. The cognitive profiles of the two groups, and their development, were mostly qualitatively similar, but there were also important qualitative differences. Logistic regression analyzes showed that superior verbal arithmetic, logical reasoning, and executive functions are vital for developing superior mathematical skills while inferior verbal arithmetic, logical reasoning, and spatial processing ability constitute unique potential risk factors for low mathematical skills.

Exploring the Correlation Between Multiple Latent Variables and Covariates in Hierarchical Data Based on the Multilevel Multidimensional IRT Model.

In many large-scale tests, it is very common that students are nested within classes or schools and that the test designers try to measure their multidimensional latent traits (e.g., logical reasoning ability and computational ability in the mathematics test). It is particularly important to explore the influences of covariates on multiple abilities for development and improvement of educational quality monitoring mechanism. In this study, motivated by a real dataset of a large-scale English achievement test, we will address how to construct an appropriate multilevel structural models to fit the data in many of multilevel models, and what are the effects of gender and socioeconomic-status differences on English multidimensional abilities at the individual level, and how does the teachers' satisfaction and school climate affect students' English abilities at the school level. A full Gibbs sampling algorithm within the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) framework is used for model estimation. Moreover, a unique form of the deviance information criterion (DIC) is used as a model comparison index. In order to verify the accuracy of the algorithm estimation, two simulations are considered in this paper. Simulation studies show that the Gibbs sampling algorithm works well in estimating all model parameters across a broad spectrum of scenarios, which can be used to guide the real data analysis. A brief discussion and suggestions for further research are shown in the concluding remarks.

Visual question answering model based on visual relationship detection

visual question answering (VQA) is a learning task involving two major fields of computer vision and natural language processing. The development of deep learning technology has contributed to the advancement of this research area. Although the research on the question answering model has made great progress, the low accuracy of the VQA model is mainly because the current question answering model structure is relatively simple, the attention mechanism of model is deviated from human attention and lacks a higher level of logical reasoning ability. In response to the above problems, we propose a VQA model based on multi-objective visual relationship detection. Firstly, the appearance feature is used to replace the image features from the original object, and the appearance model is extended by the principle of word vector similarity. The appearance features and relationship predicates are then fed into the word vector space and represented by a fixed length vector. Finally, through the concatenation of elements between the image feature and the question vector are fed into the classifier to generate an output answer. Our method is benchmarked on the DQAUAR data set, and evaluated by the Acc WUPS@0.0 and WUPS@0.9.

Educational Effects of SW Coding Notes on Computational Thinking

Computational thinking is a fundamental skill to be used by everyone in the 4th industrial revolution age and it is a hot issue of the education field in the world. Usually, SW coding means the whole process to make a computer program. Since a program has logical structure and its development process requires subsidiary abilities which analyze a problem and devise the stepwise procedure, SW coding has been understood to be a good method for computational thinking(CT). In this paper, we propose a way to teach CT by using coding notes and analyze its educational effects on CT. To find the educational effects of SW coding notes, logical reasoning ability before and after SW coding education was measured through questionnaire survey and compared by statistical methods. We sampled 51 students and divided them two groups; one for computer science major(38) and the other for computer science non-major(13). They are asked to answer three categories of questions such as problem understanding, data analysis, and problem solving. An d then by the paired t-test along with normality and homoscedasticity of two groups, the change of student’s CT ability before and after taking SW coding education was statistically tested at a significant level of 95%. According to our experiments, p-values of the paired t-test for problem understanding, data analysis, and problem solving are 0.176, 0.134, and 0.470, respectively and alternative hypotheses are accepted. It implies that student’s logical reasoning ability can be improved and their academic achievement is also relatively great by using SW coding notes. Although there are similar results for educational effects of SW coding, our work is different from them in terms of using new education tool named as SW coding notes.

Logical Reasoning, Spatial Processing, and Verbal Working Memory: Longitudinal Predictors of Physics Achievement at Age 12-13 Years.

To date, few studies have tried to pinpoint the mechanisms supporting children’s skills in science. This study investigated to what extent logical reasoning, spatial processing, and working memory, tapped at age 9–10 years, are predictive of physics skills at age 12–13 years. The study used a sample of 81 children (37 girls). Measures of arithmetic calculation and reading comprehension were also included in the study. The multiple regression model accounted for 24% of the variation in physics achievement. The model showed that spatial processing (4.6%) and verbal working memory (4.5%) accounted for a similar amount of unique variance, while logical reasoning accounted for 5.7% variance. The measures of arithmetic calculation and reading comprehension did not account for any unique variance. Nine percent of the accounted variance was shared variance. The results demonstrate that physics is a multivariate discipline that draws upon numerous cognitive resources. Logical reasoning ability is a key component in order for children to learn about abstract physics facts, concepts, theories, and applying complex scientific methods. Spatial processing is important as it may sub-serve the assembly of diverse sources of visual-spatial information into a spatial-schematic image. The working memory system provides a flexible and efficient mental workspace that can supervise, coordinate, and execute processes involved in physics problem-solving.

QUALITY OF CROWDSOURCED RELEVANCE JUDGMENTS IN ASSOCIATION WITH LOGICAL REASONING ABILITY

Crowdsourcing has become a low-cost and scalable alternative to gather relevance assessments through crowdsourcing platforms. However, when gathering subjective human judgments, it can be challenging to enforce data quality due to the lack of vision about how judges make a decision. It is important to determine the attributes that could affect the effectiveness of crowsourced-judgments in an information retrieval systems evaluation. The purpose of the experiment that is discussed in this paper is to investigate if logical reasoning ability of the crowd workers is related to the quality of the relevant judgments produced through the crowdsource process. The study also evaluates the effect of cognitive characteristics on the quality of relevance judgment compared to the gold standard dataset. Through this experiment, a comparison study is done between the quality of the judgments obtained through the crowdsourcing process and the original baseline judgments generated by the hired experts by TREC. In the study, the systems performances were measured using both of these sets of relevance judgments to see its correlation. The experimentation reveals that quality of relevance judgments is highly correlated with the logical reasoning ability of individuals. The judgment difficulty level reported by the crowdsource workers and the confidence level claimed by the workers showed a significant correlation with the quality of the judgments. Unexpectedly though, self-reported knowledge about a given topic and demographics data have no correlation with the quality of judgments produced through crowdsourcing

STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE, APTITUDE AND OCCUPATIONAL INTEREST IN THE NATIONAL CAREER ASSESSMENT EXAMINATION

An investigation had been conducted to determine student’s academic performance, occupational interest and aptitude in the National Career Assessment Examination (NCAE) and ascertain predictors of their performance. This endeavor was put in place by the administration to have a research-based Senior High School curriculum that fits students need in Central Mindanao Laboratory High School. Results of NCAE from the Department of Education and grades of students from the laboratory high school records-in-charge were collected, coded, analyzed and interpreted. Data gathered within the three school year period became bases of the results of this research endeavor. Descriptive statistics showed that based on the NCAE results, students had better general scholastic aptitude but poor entrepreneurial skill. Occupational interests of students were so varied ranging from highly preferred to least preferred. Career in the sciences was moderately preferred by the students. Most of the students had no highly preferred occupation. Correlation showed that creativity was not associated with student’s academic performance while the rest such as, general scholastic aptitude (science ability, reading comprehension, verbal ability and mathematical ability), technical-vocational ability (clerical skill and visual manipulative skill), non-verbal ability, logical reasoning ability, and entrepreneurial skill (planning and decision making, budgeting, marketing and forecasting) were positively correlated to student’s performance. Stepwise linear regression analysis indicated that mathematical ability, verbal ability and logical reasoning ability were predictors of student’s academic performance. Article DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.20319/pijtel.2018.23.0121 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.

The Development of Android and Web-based Logical Thinking Measurement Tools as an Alternative Solution for Research Instruments

This type of research is a development research or it is known by the term of Research and Development (R & D). The focus of this research is to develop a logical reasoning ability measurement tool based on qualified Web and Android as a research instrument alternative solution. The implementation of this research is conducted on Statistics Department in the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Universitas Negeri Makassar. The subject of the study in question is the students of Statistics Department of Universitas Negeri Makassar. Measurement tool that will be developed is a Test of Logical Thinking (TOLT). The development of this information system using PHP programming language based on CodeIgniter Framework with MySQL database.

Summary of Research Progress of Brain Machine Integration

Objective: Brain Machine Integration refers to a hybrid intelligent system that integrates biological intelligence and machine intelligencethrough brain computer interface technology, which is considered one of the most important frontier science fields in the 21st century. Asan important part of brain integration, machine intelligence has strong storage and computing power. Compared with machine intelligence,the advantage of bio-intelligence lies in its high efficiency and low power consumption perception and logical reasoning ability. It is a keyproblem and challenge to combine the advantages of the two and build a more powerful new intelligent form.Methods: The research work related to brain-computer fusion system was analyzed with literature review and compared with the research.Results: This paper summarizes the research work related to migratory brain fusion system, and analyzes the main problems and challengesin the study of migratory brain-computer fusion system.

PENGEMBANGAN BAHAN AJAR MATEMATIKA DENGAN MODEL DISCOVERY LEARNING UNTUK MENINGKATKAN KEMAMPUAN PEMAHAMAN PRINSIP-PRINSIP MATEMATIKA DAN KEMAMPUAN PENALARAN LOGIS SISWA DI SMAN 1 JARAI KABUPATEN LAHAT

This study aims to produce teaching materials teaching math with discovery learning models that can improve understanding of the principles of mathematics and logical reasoning of students in SMA Negeri 1 Jarai district. Lahat. This type of research is the R & D (Research & Development), using the model of development of learning tools 4-D. Research subjects comprised for students of class X3 SMA Negeri 1 Jarai district. Lahat amounting to 23 people composed of 5 men and 18 women. Instruments in the study includes (1) sheet validation assessment of mathematics teaching materials discovery learning model (2) sheet practicality teaching materials discovery learning model, (3) copies of the effectiveness of teaching materials discovery learning model in the form of sheets of observations of the activities of teachers and students, a questionnaire sheet student responses, tests the ability of understanding the principles of mathematics, logical reasoning ability tests student, achievement test sheet. The collected data were analyzed with descriptive analysis. The results showed that the mathematical teaching materials discovery learning model developed included the category of very valid, practical, effective to improve understanding of the principles of mathematics and logical reasoning of students. Keywords: Instructional Materials Mathematics with Discovery Learning Model, the ability of understanding the principles ofmathematics, logical reasoning of students

Examining the Relationship between Gender, Spatial Ability, Logical Reasoning Ability, and Preferred Mode of Processing

Bu arastirma sinif ogretmeni adaylarinin matematik problemlerini cozme tercihleri ile gorsel ve analitik becerileri arasindaki iliskinin incelenmesini amaclamaktadir. Bu kapsamda 107 ogretmen adayina Matematik Islem Testi (MIT), Zihinden Dondurme Tesit (ZDT) ve Mantiksal Dusunme Grup Testi (MDGT) uygulanmistir. Elde edilen sonuclar, Sinif ogretmeni adaylarinin ZDT ve MDGT testlerine iliskin performanslari gorsel ve analitik beceri duzeylerinin orta duzeyde oldugunu gostermektedir. Adaylarin MIT testinde aldiklari puanlar matematik problemlerini cozme tercihlerine gore orta duzeyin uzerinde olduklari belirlenmistir. Cinsiyet degiskenine gore kiz ve erkek adaylarin problem cozme tercihleri arasinda anlamli bir farklilik olmadigi belirlenmistir. Ancak, cinsiyet degiskenine gore kiz ve erkek adaylarin ZDT performanslarinda erkeklerin lehine anlamli bir farklilik oldugu belirlenmistir. Bununla beraber, cinsiyet degiskenine gore adaylarin MDGT ortalama puanlari arasinda anlamli bir farklilik olmadigi tespit edilmistir. cinsiyet, gorsel ve analitik becerilerin adaylarin problem cozme tercihleri arasindaki anlamli bir iliski olmadigi tespit edilmistir. Bu durum, adaylarin gorsel ve analitik becerileri ile gorsel ve analitik problem cozme tercihleri arasinda anlamli bir iliski olmadigini gostermektedir.

Clinical characteristics and related factors of cognitive function rehabilitative function in post-stroke patients with aphasia

Objective To study the clinical characteristics and potential influencing factors of rehabilitation of cognition in post-stroke patients with aphasia. Methods Forty-one patients with aphasia after ischemic stroke, admitted to Nanfang hospital and Nanfang Yanling Hospital from June 2015 to November 2016 were included. Their primary clinical information and NIHSS scores were registered. In acute phase, Aphasia Battery of Chinese and Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination was used to evaluate language ability and classify the aphasia type. Non-language-based Cognitive assessment (NLCA) was used to assess patients’ nonlinguistic cognition. Besides, the assessment of post-stroke depression and dependence degree of daily living activities were performed. 3 months later, patients were evaluated again. A total of 30 aphasia patients completed the final follow-up. Results (1) Compared with the baseline in patients with aphasia after stoke, all domains of language ability were significantly improved after 3 months(P<0.05). (2)Every nonlinguistic cognitive score was significantly increased within 3 months(total NLCA score(65.83±13.02 vs 48.00±25.11), memory(17.23±2.49 vs 13.30±5.42), visual spatial ability(10.67±2.43 vs 8.07±3.75), logical reasoning ability(6.53±1.48 vs 4.97±2.43), attention(25.57±5.79 vs 17.43±12.33), executive function(5.77±3.47 vs 4.20±4.23), all P<0.01). (3)The NLCA total score (62.40±14.23 vs 72.70±6.34)and scores in visual spatial (9.95±2.67 vs 12.10±0.74)and abstract reasoning(6.05±1.54 vs 7.50±0.71) of persisting aphasia patients were significantly lower than that of aphasia recovered group(all P<0.05). (4) Multivariate regression showed that initial NLCA score had a negative predictive effect on cognitive function improvement of aphasia patients 3 months after stroke(β=-0.603, P<0.01). Conclusion The rehabilitation of cognitive function in patients with aphasia after stroke is similar to that of language function. Patients with persisting aphasia may have worse performance on nonlinguistic cognition and ability of daily living, even with more serious depressive emotion. Evaluation of nonlinguistic cognition in post-stroke aphasia patients in acute phase is necessary and the score seems to be an important predicting factor of 3-month cognition. Key words: Ischemic stroke; Aphasia; Cognitive function; Rehabilitation

A study of geometric understanding via logical reasoning in Hong Kong

The purposes of the study reported herein were to identify the common mistakes in geometry made by junior secondary school students in Hong Kong, and to compare the students' performance in geometry with their results in a logic test. A geometry test and a logic test were developed and administered to a sample of 554 students aged between 13 and 14. The students in schools with a higher level of academic achievement were found to obtain higher scores in the geometry test. In addition, a strong correlation was found between students' achievement in geometry and their fundamental logical reasoning ability. The findings offer grounds for reflection on the geometry curriculum currently in place in junior secondary schools in Hong Kong.

IT 융합교육을 위한 비전공자 코딩교육의 발전방안

코딩교육은 융합형 교육의 효과적인 도구로 문제해결 방법을 기획하고 설계하는 과정 등을 통해 문제해결 능력, 논리적 사고능력, 창의적 사고능력 등을 키울 수 있다. 코딩교육을 위한 연구는 주로 초.중등 학생들을 대상으로 연구가 활발히 진행되고 있으며 대학생들을 대상으로 한 연구는 부족한 실정이다. 지금 현시점에서는 코딩교육을 전혀 받지 못한 대학생들의 교육이 시급한 실정이다. 코딩교육의 필요성을 인지하고 대학에서도 교양필수로 교과목을 지정하여 교육하려는 시도를 하고 있지만 어떻게 교육을 할 것인지에 대해 고심하고 있는 실정이다. 보편적 교육으로서의 코딩교육에 대한 연구가 필요한 시점이다. 따라서 본 연구에서는 비전공자들을 대상으로 코딩교육을 효율적으로 운영하기 위해 플립러닝을 적용한 앱인벤터를 활용한 교육과정을 제시하였다. 교육의 효과를 측정하기 위해 설문조사와 개인 인터뷰를 실시하였다. 코딩교육을 통해 비전공자 학습자들의 전공영역과 융합하여 다양한 문제들을 컴퓨팅 사고력 기반으로 해결해 나갈 수 있는 문제해결 능력을 향상시킬 것으로 기대한다. Coding education is an effective convergence type educational tool. While solving problems and designing programs, students can enhance problem solving ability, logical reasoning ability and creative thinking. Researches on coding education are done primarily for elementary school and middle school students. However, researches on college students are lacking. Today, educating college students about coding is in dire need. Although there are efforts to promote the importance of coding education and make it requirements. People find it difficult to find ways to provide training. There is a need for researches on coding as universal education. Therefore, this research proposed educational training using app inventor based on flipped running in order to effectively promote coding education. This study conducted the survey and the personal interview to measure the effectiveness of coding education. It is hoped that, through coding education, students who do not major in coding could combined their knowledge of their major with coding to improve their problem solving ability to solve various problems based on computing knowledge and approach.

A Multimedia Child Developmental Screening Checklist: Design and Validation.

BackgroundIdentifying disability early in life confers long-term benefits for children. The Taipei City Child Development Screening tool, second version (Taipei II) provides checklists for 13 child age groups from 4 months to 6 years. However, the usability of a text-based screening tool largely depends on the literacy level and logical reasoning ability of the caregivers, as well as language barriers caused by increasing numbers of immigrants.ObjectiveThe objectives of this study were to (1) design and develop a Web-based multimedia version of the current Taipei II developmental screening tool, and (2) investigate the measurement equivalence of this multimedia version to the original paper-based version.MethodsTo develop the multimedia version of Taipei II, a team of experts created illustrations, translations, and dubbing of the original checklists. The developmental screening test was administered to a total of 390 primary caregivers of children aged between 4 months and 6 years.ResultsPsychometric testing revealed excellent agreement between the paper and multimedia versions of Taipei II. Good to excellent reliabilities were demonstrated for all age groups for both the cross-mode similarity (mode intraclass correlation range 0.85-0.96) and the test-retest reliability (r=.93). Regarding the usability, the mean score was 4.80 (SD 0.03), indicating that users were satisfied with their multimedia website experience.ConclusionsThe multimedia tool produced essentially equivalent results to the paper-based tool. In addition, it had numerous advantages, such as it can facilitate active participation and promote early screening of target populations.ClinicalTrialClinicaltrials.gov NCT02359591; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02359591 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6l21mmdNn)

Bleeding-heart conservatives and hard-headed liberals: The dual processes of moral judgements

Conservatives differ from liberals in a variety of domains, including exhibiting greater fear and disgust sensitivity. Additionally, experimental procedures to reduce reasoning ability lead to stronger endorsement of conservative views. We propose that dual-process models of moral judgements can account for these findings, with conservatives relying on System 1 (fast, emotional) and liberals relying on System 2 (slow, reasoned) processes. To test this theory, we had liberal and conservative participants respond to moral dilemmas under cognitive load or with no load. As predicted, liberals took longer to respond under cognitive load than under no load, indicating a reliance on controlled reasoning processes. Conservatives' response times were not affected by cognitive load. These differences cannot be accounted for by group differences in logical reasoning or working memory capacity. Instead, as predicted, logical reasoning ability positively predicted the time that liberals, but not conservatives, spent contemplating the dilemmas. These findings suggest that differential reliance on Systems 1 and 2 may be a fundamental aspect of left-right political orientation. They also challenge intuitionist models of morality and politics and suggest a dual-process theory of morality could account for some of the discrepancies in the political psychology literature.

Pemetaan Profil Kemampuan Penalaran Calon Guru Fisika di FKIP Universitas Mataram

Learning physics is not only produces a good learning outcomes, but requires the understanding, reasoning ability and conceptual understanding to solve the problems. Efforts that can be done to design a good learning is to mapping the ability of the learners. In this research, mapping of preservice physics teacher’s reasoning ability profile to know the description of the ability of spatial reasoning, logical reasoning and analytical reasoning. This is descriptive research. The population of this study includes all of students of physics education at Mataram University with the number of respondents as many as 125 students from the proportionally selected from each grade. The result of simple descriptive statistic test shows that students have higher spatial reasoning ability compared to logical and analytical reasoning ability as indicated by average score of reasoning ability test. Spatial reasoning skills of prospective teachers’ are also analyzed on the basis of their indicators. The highest scores is on the ability to complete the pattern and the lowest score is on the relation and logical consistency.

1796 – Social phobia in non-demented 75- and 85-year olds. Associated factors

Social phobia is one of the most common psychiatric disorders. There is a lack of knowledge on the relationship between social phobia and cognitive functioning among older adults. To examine cognitive functioning, prevalence and psychiatric comorbidity of social phobia in an elderly population. A general population sample of non-demented 75-year olds (N = 768) and 85-year olds (N = 432) was investigated in 2005-2006 (75-year olds) and 2009-2010 (85-year olds) by psychiatric nurses. The procedure was identical with semistructured psychiatric examinations including the Comprehensive Psychopathological Rating Scale, and the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview. Social phobia was diagnosed according to the DSM-IV criteria. Cognitive function was measured with the Mini-Mental State Examination, and eight different psychometric tests measuring short- and long-term memory, nonverbal memory, logical reasoning, visuospatial and executive ability. The one-month prevalence of social phobia was 2.5% (N = 30), this was more common among women than among men (3.2% vs. 1.3%). Individuals with social phobia more often had major depression compared to individuals without symptoms of social phobia (33.3% vs. 4.3%). MMSE-score did not differ between individuals with and without social phobia. Individuals with social phobia had worse visuospatial and executive ability measured with Clock Test, compared to individuals with no symptoms of social phobia. Our results indicate that social phobia is not unusual in old age and that comorbidity with depression is common. Social phobia does not have an impact on global cognitive functioning. Social phobia influenced visuospatial and executive ability but not performance on several other cognitive tests.