What is a deduction?

Deduction refers to a systematic method of deriving conclusions from facts, direct observations or explicitly provided information. Whilst the inferences section of the Watson Glaser test might require you to look beyond the information explicitly provided and make a logical judgment based on circumstantial evidence (for example, if deciding whether an answer is "probably" true or "probably" false), the deduction section requires you to focus only on the information you are given. In short, deductive reasoning tests your ability to draw logical conclusions from certain specified facts or information.

The deduction section of a Watson Glaser test presents you with a primary passage of text, followed by a series of proposed conclusions. You must then determine whether each of these proposed conclusions can be reached based (only) on the information presented in the primary passage of text. 

You must regard all the information contained within the primary passage of text to be objectively true, even if you do not believe this to be the case in reality. For example, the sentence "pillows are comfortable" should be taken to mean all pillows are actually comfortable, including small, hard or broken pillows. 

You must also disregard any prior knowledge, biases or intuition when determining whether each conclusion can be reached and assess each proposed conclusion independently. With this in mind:

• Select CONCLUSION FOLLOWS if you think the conclusion can be reached based (only) on the information presented in the primary passage of text. 
• Select CONCLUSION DOES NOT FOLLOW if you don’t think the conclusion can be reached based (only) on the specific information presented in the primary passage of text. 

Even if you know that a certain proposed conclusion is true (or likely to be true), if you cannot confirm this based only on the information presented within the primary passage, then you cannot resolve that the conclusion follows.