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Research on
abilities goes back over 70 years. The Highlands Program™ has
conducted a number of far reaching studies on abilities. Research
has consistently shown that when people are in work in which they
use their natural abilities, they enjoy the work more and are also
more successful. The assessment includes:
-
driving
abilities
-
specialised
abilities
-
personal style
-
vocabulary
The Driving Abilities
The Highlands Ability Battery identifies five
abilities as driving abilities. These five abilities will be more or
less assertive in anyone individual. Beyond a certain point, they
may demand to be recognized and utilized by the individual. The
scores in these abilities are significant in anticipating academic
and occupational performance and satisfaction.
The five driving abilities are measured in
separate work samples:
Classification assesses the
ability to see relationships among seemingly unrelated events,
situations, or information. The relative ability to move from the
specific to the more general, to detect a common thread that joins
individual objects into a pattern.
Concept Organization assesses
the ability to arrange ideas, information, or objects in their most
logical order. The ability to move from the general to the specific
in solving problems.
Idea Productivity
measures the number of ideas that spring to a person's mind
over a particular period of time in response to a set of new facts.
The quantity of ideas, not the quality. This ability may be
evidenced by the relative contributions of individuals who
participate in a brainstorming session.
Spatial Relations Theory
measures the relative ability to see and understand how things work.
The ability to conceptualise and understand relationships, whether
between abstractions or between tangible objects.
Spatial Relations
Visualization
measures the ability to " see" and follow in three dimensions
an object that is represented in two dimensions. The ability is
related to the relative preference for hands-on work and experience
and the satisfaction in achieving tangible results.
The Specialized Abilities
The specialized abilities can be divided into two
categories -musical abilities and other specialized abilities.
Together and separately, these abilities have an impact on the ways
in which an individual takes in and learns new material.
The musical abilities
Tonal Memory
the ability to remember tunes,
tonal sequences and linguistic content. An excellent measure of an
individual's capacity to learn aurally, eg by listening to tapes.
Rhythm Memory
the ease with which an individual can turn
physical movement into a learning process.
Pitch Discrimination
measures sensitivity to small differences in external
stimuli; helpful to an individual in detecting subtle changes in the
speech inflection of others.
Design Memory
the ability to learn through graphics and to place new data and
information into graphic form, e.g., diagrams, drawings, outlines,
etc.
Observation
the ability to focus on and remember
visual details and to detect changes and irregularities as they
occur.
Verbal Memory
the ease with which an individual learns
new words and remembers the content of information presented
visually, as in printed text; sometimes called associative memory.
Number Memory
the ability to learn, remember and use non-associated material such
as raw data and numbers.
Visual Speed & Accuracy
the ease and speed with which an individual processes and
interprets new written data; advantageous in fields that require
instant recall of statistics.
Personal style
Generalist A generalist is an
individual in the upper percentiles of the generalist/specialist
scale. Seventy-five percent of the general population fall into this
range. Generalists derive energy from working in groups and are
intuitive about the reactions of others. They like to undertake a
variety of tasks and enjoy contributing to the execution of a group
project.
Specialist Individuals at the
lower end of the generalist/specialist scale are called specialists.
Specialists make up one in every four individuals. Specialists
prefer to work and solve problems independently. They like to study
a project in depth and to contribute from their own perspectives.
Extrovert Extroverts score in
the upper percentiles of the extrovert/introvert scale. An extrovert
gets energy from interacting with other people. An extrovert may not
enjoy a project on which he or she is required to work alone--e.g.
writing a long report. Extroverts process information by talking
about it.
Introvert Introverts score in
the lower percentiles in the scale measuring
extroversion/introversion. Introverts prefer either to work alone or
to work with other people one-on-one or in clearly structured
circumstances. Introverts process information by thinking about it.
Time Frame Orientation Measures
the individual's comfort with future projects and goals. People are
divided into short-term. Mid-term and long-term time frames. An
individual with short-term orientation will want to work with tasks
and problems that can be finished within a short period, i.e. In a
few months. An individual with mid-term orientation will seek tasks
and problems that have implications for other projects over a longer
period, i.e. One-four years, an individual with long-term
orientation prefers to work on long-term projects that require
strategic planning and execution of more distant goals.
Vocabulary
This is an
acquired skill rather than a natural ability. It determines the
range of people with whom you interact most easily and naturally. It
is considered easier to interact and share ideas with people who are
similar to you in vocabulary than almost any other group.
Since vocabulary
is not ability you can change your vocabulary level with study and
concentration. It is an achievement score and is included because
of its enormous impact in the workplace
If your score is
low there are a number of suggestions we can offer to help you
develop this.
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