Section 1 is the section students most often write off as untrainable. It is slow to move, but it does move. Here is what it really tests, how to practise each stimulus type, and the review habit that turns wrong answers into a rising score.
The single most useful thing to internalise about GAMSAT Section 1 is that there is nothing to memorise. Everything you need to answer a question is in the stimulus in front of you. The section is not checking whether you have read the right books or know the right facts; it is checking whether you can read closely and reason from a text under time pressure. That reframing changes how you practise: the goal is not to learn content, it is to sharpen a skill.
Original prose, poetry, social and behavioural and graphics questions, with a breakdown by skill so you can see whether it is inference, tone or argument that is costing you.
Section 1, Reasoning in Humanities and Social Sciences, is a set of multiple-choice questions (currently around 62) sat in roughly 100 minutes, which works out to about a minute and a half per question. The stimuli come in four broad forms, and the questions test a recurring set of skills:
Across all of them, the skills being marked are main idea, inference, tone and attitude, evaluating an argument, vocabulary in context, and reading figurative language.
Weaker Section 1 answers come from reading for events ("what happened") instead of intent ("what is the writer doing, and why"). Train yourself to ask the second question. In a prose passage, that means noticing how a character is framed; in an argument, it means asking what the author is trying to persuade you of and what they are quietly assuming; in poetry, it means asking what an image is standing in for. Almost every question type rewards this shift from surface to intent.
Prose: after reading, summarise the narrator's attitude in a few words before looking at the options. Tone questions become far easier when you have already committed to a reading and can check it against the evidence in the writer's word choice.
Poetry: find the turn, the point where the poem shifts in mood or direction, then work out what the central images represent. Most poetry marks are lost by readers who decode the literal words but miss the figurative meaning.
Argument passages: physically label the claim, the evidence and the assumption before you read the answers. Many questions hinge on the unstated assumption, and naming it first stops you being pulled toward an option that is true in the world but not supported by the passage.
Graphics and cartoons: identify the target and the tone first. Ask who or what is being criticised and how you can tell, then read the options against that.
This is where the real improvement happens, and almost nobody does it properly. When you get a question wrong, do not just read the right answer and move on. Argue with yourself. Lay out why you chose your answer and why the correct one is better. Try to build the strongest possible case for the correct option, using only the text. Give the review no time limit, because the point is not to finish quickly, it is to retrain your judgement. Doing this honestly, question after question, is the closest thing Section 1 has to a reliable method.
Choosing the option that is true in the real world rather than the one the passage supports. Speed-reading the whole passage and never going back to re-read the lines the question turns on. Importing outside knowledge into a literature passage. And treating tone questions as a guess instead of reading the evidence in the writer's words.
No. Everything you need is in the stimulus. It marks how carefully you read and how well you reason from the text, not what facts you have memorised.
Yes, though it is the slowest section to move. Close reading, inference and tone are trainable with deliberate question practice and the honest review habit above.
Both are reasoning tests, but Section 1 reasons from written and visual humanities material, while Section 3 reasons from scientific data, experiments and formulae.