Prior Research

A study by Salthouse (2009) indicates that the reasoning ability of adults may begin to decline as early as 20 years of age. There are different kinds of reasoning ability, but in general they all require combining multiple pieces of information–connecting the dots–in order to arrive at correct conclusions, solutions or answers. Without effortful attempts to maintain this mental faculty, it tends to decline with age.

Activity Design Features

Many of The Wiz Quiz questions call for participants to reason or problem-solve by combining multiple clues in order to figure out correct answers. This is illustrated by the following item from the category, Idioms:

What is the Spanish word that expresses a sentiment or action akin to “kicking the can down the road”, as in “That’s not solving the budget crisis; it’s just kicking the can down the road.”

An accurate response to this question requires, first, identifying postponement or procrastination as the essence of the “kicking the can” idiom, which can be inferred from the “budget crisis” clause, and then using that partial result as a bridge to the correct answer “manana”, which is also an idiom associated with procrastination. By providing participants the opportunity to puzzle about questions like this, The Wiz Quiz helps maintain their reasoning faculty.

Findings of The Wiz Quiz Evaluations

Again, 86% of the respondents indicated that they appreciated the complexity of the questions used in the activity, and this suggests that the questions are prompting them to repeatedly engage in the process of using logical reasoning, rather than simple memory of declarative knowledge, to arrive at correct answers.