Elsevier

Intelligence

Volume 27, Issue 4, December 1999, Pages 329-345
Intelligence

Generation speed in Raven's progressive matrices test

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0160-2896(99)00023-9Get rights and content

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the role of response fluency on a well-known intelligence test, Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM) test. Finding rules that govern the items is critical in solving this test. Finding these rules is conceptualized as sampling rules from a (statistical) rule distribution until the correct one is attained. Response fluency is then seen as generation speed, or the speed at which a person generates (samples) rules from this distribution. We develop a test that isolates this speed of sampling variable, and a method to check whether this variable was adequately isolated. The score on this test is then compared with performance on the APM test. It is found that the speed at which people sample from such distributions is an important variable in solving APM items.

Section snippets

Generation Speed

A typical APM item is given in Fig. 1; participants are instructed to complete the lower right-hand cell of the 3×3 matrix with one of the eight answer alternatives at the bottom. They are told to find a logical rule governing the first as well as the second row of this matrix; once found, this rule has to be applied to row three in order to complete the item.

Essentially, the thesis of this paper is that a rule generation process plays a crucial role in solving the APM items. If (APM) rules are

Hypothesis One

Testing of the quantitative differences hypothesis is done using a randomized blocks ANOVA design: each participant is treated as its own block, the five items are treated as the experimental conditions. Contrary to usual practice, no prediction is made about the experimental variable, but a strong effect is predicted for the blocking variable. It is useful to note at this point the relation between this procedure and a classical way to calculate test reliability based on ANOVA methods (Hoyt,

Participants

Participants are 127 undergraduate psychology students of Leuven university who received course credit for their participation. Of the 82% of participants of whom sex is known (they were allowed to use an alias), 18% are male.

Procedure

In the first session, the APM test was taken, for which 40 min were allowed. One week later came, the second session in which the generation task was administered. In the instructions, participants are encouraged to give as many rules as possible for each item. Here, a 20

Results

The generation task and the APM test have a split-half reliability of 0.86 and 0.80, respectively. The generation task has an interrater reliability of 0.90. Other reliabilities will be mentioned throughout the text.

Discussion

In the past, solving analogy problems (like the APM items) has been the focus of a wide array of research. One line of research has stressed the importance of working memory capacity (e.g., Kyllonen and Christal, 1990, Mulholland et al., 1980, Simon and Kotovsky, 1963. Others have argued for the importance of metacognition or control processes Embretson, 1995, Sternberg, 1985. Some authors have constructed new Raven-type items in order to facilitate model testing Embretson, 1995, Hornke and

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Siegfried Dewitte, Michel Meulders, Gert Storms, Francis Tuerlinckx and Iven Van Mechelen for their fluency in providing many useful comments.

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