Otis-Lennon School Ability Test: Modern Otis school ability test

About the Otis-Lennon School Ability Test

By the mid-1960s the Otis Quick-Scoring Mental Ability Tests (1936) had been the dominant US school cognitive screening instrument for 30 years, but the norms were outdated and the format showed its age. Arthur Otis collaborated with Roger Lennon at Harcourt to produce a thoroughly revised version: the Otis-Lennon Mental Ability Test (1967).

The OL/MAT had updated content reflecting 1960s American culture, modernized item formats, machine-scoreable answer sheets, and norms based on a large national sample. The test went through subsequent revisions in 1979 (Otis-Lennon School Ability Test or OLSAT), 1989 (OLSAT-7), 1996 (OLSAT-7 Form R), and 2003 (OLSAT-8, current edition). Throughout this evolution the basic Otis methodology - mixed verbal and quantitative items, multiple-choice format, school-grade-specific levels - has remained constant.

The OLSAT-8 is widely used today for gifted program identification, school placement decisions, and cognitive screening in the United States. It is one of the most-administered cognitive tests in American K-12 education. The lineage from Arthur Otis's 1918 Group Intelligence Scale through to the modern OLSAT is the longest continuous test-development lineage in American educational psychology.

The 5 subtests

Sample Items (Illustrative)

Items are typically presented in a multiple-choice format where the test-taker selects the best option from four choices. Scoring is based on the number of correct responses.

These are illustrative samples, not actual items from the protected test.

Source

All test materials and historical content on this page are transcribed from:

Arthur S. Otis & Roger T. Lennon (1967). Otis-Lennon School Ability Test.

OLSAT items and current editions are under Pearson Assessment copyright. We document the test's history and its lineal connection to Otis 1918 and 1936.