General Mental Ability · UPPCS (Uttar Pradesh)

What the official syllabus says

Preliminary Examination, Paper-II, General Studies-II:
General mental ability.

General mental ability covers the pattern-finding and visual questions of an aptitude test. Statement-based reasoning and arrangement puzzles are listed under Logical Reasoning and Analytical Ability.

Topics in detail

Series and patterns

Number series: differences, ratios, squares and cubes, primes, mixed patterns
Letter series and alphabet positions (A = 1 to Z = 26, and in reverse)
Alpha-numeric series and missing terms
Wrong number in a series
Number and letter matrices

Verbal ability tests

Analogies: word, number and letter analogies
Classification: finding the odd one out
Coding and decoding: letter shifting, substitution and number codes
Mathematical operations with substituted symbols
Alphabetical order of words and meaningful word formation
Input-output (machine) sequences

Relations and positions

Blood relations, including coded relations
Direction sense: turns, distances and final position
Ranking and position in a row

Clocks and calendars

Angle between the hands of a clock; when the hands coincide or are opposite
Gaining and losing clocks
Day of the week for a given date; odd days; leap years

Non-verbal and visual reasoning

Figure series and completing a pattern
Mirror images and water images
Paper folding and cutting
Embedded figures; counting triangles, squares and lines in a figure
Cubes: painting and cutting a cube into smaller cubes
Dice: opposite faces from several positions
Venn diagrams showing relations between classes

Number puzzles and counting

Missing numbers in figures, grids and triangles built on a rule
Counting numbers or letters in a sequence that meet given conditions
Arithmetical reasoning: ages, heads and legs, simple word puzzles
Arranging letters or digits by a rule and finding the element at a position

Common series patterns

Pattern	Example
Differences rising by a fixed step	3, 5, 9, 15, 23 (differences 2, 4, 6, 8)
Squares	1, 4, 9, 16, 25
Squares plus one	2, 5, 10, 17, 26
Double and add one	3, 7, 15, 31, 63
Prime numbers	2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13
Letters skipping a fixed number	A, C, E, G, I

Working method

Learn alphabet positions and squares up to 30 and cubes up to 20 by heart; they speed up most series questions.
For figures, check one element at a time: position, rotation, number, shading.
Use a quick diagram for directions and family trees rather than holding them in the head.

Overlaps

Number work here draws on the number system and arithmetic in Elementary Mathematics.