The effect of practice on Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices

Sixty-seven participants (39 men and 28 women), ranging in age from 26 to 79 years, were administered Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM) on three occasions. Although total APM scores were found to be highly reliable across the three occasions, the reliabilities of most individual items were extremely low. A single-factor model remained a borderline adequate fit (explaining approximately 20% of the variance) for the interitem correlation matrix on all three occasions. Total APM scores increased significantly across the three occasions (approximately two items per occasion). Improvements in total score across the occasions happened within a context of subjects changing both correct and incorrect responses from the previous occasion. The number of items left unanswered was found to be unrelated to both APM score on any given occasion and the amount of gain in score made across occasions. These findings suggest that the improvements in performance were not based on the acquisition of a strategy design to respond to more items or on the retention of item-specific information, but rather, the improvement reflected learning, something common to the types of items found in the APM.