Logical Reasoning
Critical Thinking
3,438 words, 8 sections
Critical Thinking is the first unit of Logical Reasoning in the PMDC MDCAT-2025 uniform curriculum, and it carries three learning outcomes: building logical arguments for statements to be true or false, giving reasons for the right beliefs, and identifying and critically evaluating false beliefs. Logical Reasoning is worth 9 of the 180 marks in the paper, and this chapter accounts for 14 distinct questions across 12 official papers between 2013 and 2026, examined by DUHS, Federal, KMU and UHS at a mean item difficulty of 2.29 on the bank scale. The weight sits almost entirely in one topic: Drawing Inferences and Conclusions holds 9 of the 14 questions over four boards, with Analogies and Comparisons taking 3 and Argument Analysis and Evaluation 2. No textbook exists for this subject, so what follows is built only from the papers that were actually set. A student who has this material can read a short passage and decide which statements follow from it, tell a stated fact from an assumption, chain a set of stated comparisons, and pick out the one sound argument from a pair.
The dominant shape on this chapter is a short passage followed by two or three numbered statements, with options that combine them such as "only i and ii are correct" or "only iii statement is correct". The instruction that matters is the one built into the stem: base your answer only on the information provided. That clause turns the passage into a closed world. A statement is correct if the passage states it or forces it, and wrong if it needs a fact from outside, even when that fact is true in real life.
What separates the two is the direction of the claim. The passage on Pakistan's wildlife says the country is home to the Indus River Dolphin, and from that it follows that at least one dolphin species lives there. The same passage says people from most countries have made their home in Pakistan, so a statement that people of all nationalities live there has converted a partial quantity into a total, and it fails. Nine of the chapter's fourteen questions are built on this move.
Because the options are combinations, there is no partial credit and no room for a general impression. Each roman numeral is marked true or false on its own, and only then is the combination read off. A student who judges an option by whether it "sounds like" the passage will keep choosing the balanced-sounding mixtures, which is exactly what the recorded distractors are.
6 more sections in this chapter
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