Douglas A. Bors

Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices : Norms for first-year university students and the development of a short form

Five hundred and six first-year university students completed Ravens Advanced Progressive Matrices. Scores on Set II ranged from 6 to 35 (M= 22.17, SD = 5.60). The first 12 items of Set II were found to add little to the discriminative power of the test. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses failed to confirm Dillon et al.s two-factor solution and suggested that a single-factor best represented performance on Set II. A short-form of Set II, consisting of 12 items extracted from the original 36, was developed and found to possess acceptable psychometric properties. Although this short form differed considerably in content from the short form previously devised by Arthur and Day, the two short forms did not differ with respect to concurrent validity and predictive power.

Age, Speed of Information Processing, Recall, and Fluid Intelligence.

Abstract On three occasions, 63 adults, ranging in age from 26 to 80 years, all in good health, were tested with three speed of information-processing paradigms (the Sternberg, the Posner, and the Hick), two long-term free-recall tasks, and, as a measure of fluid intelligence, the Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices (RAPM) test. Whereas within-condition latencies for the three of the information-processing tasks and recall scores were found to be reliable and consistently correlated with age and RAPM, individual differences in within- condition accuracies and between-condition slopes produced by the three information- processing tasks were found to be unstable over time and unrelated to age and RAPM. As suggested by Salthouse (1985), a large portion of the age-related differences in fluid intelligence was found to be accounted for by age-related declines in a general latency factor (cognitive speed). Furthermore, in agreement with Salthouse, this general latency factor appeared to reflect more than what can be accounted for by the simplest of information-processing tasks (simple reaction time). Finally, given that free recall had a substantial independent effect on RAPM when age and latency were held constant, the results called into question the assumption that cognitive speed can account for all individual differences in IQ.

The effect of practice on Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices

Abstract Sixty-seven participants (39 men and 28 women), ranging in age from 26 to 79 years, were administered Ravens 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.

Individual Differences in Memory

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses how the different amounts and kinds of knowledge that people possess influence their ability to acquire new knowledge; and how that knowledge is organized in long-term memory. The chapter examines the recent work differentiating implicit from explicit remembering. It also reviews how people differ in their ability to retrieve knowledge from long-term memory. The chapter discusses three realms of research that reflect the theoretical development in the area of working memory: memory span, information processing tasks, and working memory capacity. In summary, with respect to individual differences, memory span has received immense attention, far more than any other memory task. There is a reliably identified common factor relating memory span tasks across both sensory modalities and stimulus material. Furthermore, there are established individual differences in this factor that are at least moderately stable. One of the information processing task has been the visual search task (search). Here, a single item—a digit, letter, or word—is first presented to serve as the target for which the subject must search. This target is then followed by the simultaneous presentation of one to seven items, the set of items through which the subject must search. Subjects indicate, as quickly as possible, whether the search set includes the target. As in the scanning task, the dependent measure is response latency (search time). Most contemporary approaches to memory distinguish between an short-term memory (STM) storage buffer, as exemplified by simple immediate recall tasks such as memory span, and a “mental scratch pad” where processing is carried out.

ITEMS IN CONTEXT: ASSESSING THE DIMENSIONALITY OF RAVEN'S ADVANCED PROGRESSIVE MATRICES

The problem of dimensionality with respect to Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM) specifically and, more generally, g or fluid intelligence, has been a long-standing issue. The present article reports two studies examining the dimensionality of both the original Set II of the APM (n = 506) and a short form (n = 644), using principal component analysis and Rasch analysis. Although the results from the principal component analysis were equivocal, results from the Rasch analyses more strongly suggested that both forms of the test are best described as being multidimensional. Furthermore, comparison of items common to both forms indicated a context effect, thus making adaptive testing versions of this test difficult.

What does the Mental Rotation Test Measure? An Analysis of Item Difficulty and Item Characteristics

The present study examined the contributions of various item characteristics to the difficulty of the individual items on the Mental Rotation Test (MRT). Analyses of item difficulties from a large data set of university students were conducted to assess the role of time limitation, distractor type, occlusion, configuration type, and the degree of angular disparity. Results replicated in large part previous findings that indicated that occluded items were significantly more dif- ficult than non-occluded and that mirror items were more difficult than structural items. An item characteristic not previ- ously examined in the literature, configuration type (homogeneous versus heterogeneous), also was found to be associated with item difficulty. Interestingly, no significant association was found between angular disparity and difficulty. Multiple regression analysis revealed that a model consisting of occlusion and configuration type alone was sufficient for explain- ing 53 percent of the variance in item difficulty. No interaction between these two factors was found. It is suggested, based on overall results, that basic figure perception, identification and comparison, but not necessarily mental rotation, account for much of the variance in item difficulty on the MRT.

Presenting two color words on a single Stroop trial: evidence for joint influence, not capture.

MacLeod and Hodder (1998) demonstrated that presenting two different incongruent color words in the same color on a single Stroop trial resulted in no more interference than did presenting the same incongruent color word twice, and concluded that the first word captured attention, blocking out the second. They also showed that, within a trial, neither stimulus onset asynchrony between the two items nor the presence/absence of a visible gap between the two items had any effect. We replicated all of their empirical findings. Then, by extending their design and factorially combining three types of items-incongruent words, congruent words, and control nonwords-within a trial, we demonstrated thatboth items within a trial do influence processing, with the contribution of the second greater than that of the first. These results are incompatible with a capture account and suggest instead that the word dimension continues to be monitored during the attempt to identify and produce the name of the color.

Inspection Time and Intelligence: Practice, Strategies, and Attention

Abstract Prior studies have shown that Inspection Time (IT) is moderately correlated with IQ. Typically, investigators have asserted that a shared mental speed factor is responsible for this correlation. Three experiments examined the effects of practice, response strategies, and attentiveness on inspection time and its relation to IQ. Results from Experiment 1 illustrated that IT improves over occasions and that, with improvement, the strength of the IT–IQ correlation is attenuated. Using accuracy rates from the longest stimulus durations in the IT task as an index of attentiveness, results from Experiment 2 suggested that attentiveness is at least in part responsible for the IT–IQ correlation. Although results from Experiment 3 further suggested that attentiveness contributes to individual differences in IT, the results also suggest that other processes, perhaps related to mental speed, contribute to the IT–IQ correlation.

THE EFFECTS OF POST-WEANING ENVIRONMENT, BIOLOGICAL DAM, AND NURSING DAM ON FEEDING NEOPHOBIA, OPEN FIELD ACTIVITY, AND LEARNING

Using rats in a cross-fostering design we examined the effects of pre- and post-weaning rearing environments on feeding neophobia, open field activity, runway training, and visual discrimination learning. Fostering had no effect on the offspring behaviors. The animals reared, post-weaning, in an enriched environment consumed more food in a novel situation, were less active in the open field, and learned the first of two discrimination tasks faster than did the animals reared in the standard condition. Inter-correlations among these measures were nonsignificant, suggesting that the effect of environment on learning cannot be reduced to temperamental factors. The deficit in learning resulting from rearing in standard environment does not, however, appear to be irreversible; animals reared in the standard condition reached performance levels on the second discrimination task characteristic of those reared in the enriched environment.

The Development of a Same-Different Inspection Time Paradigm and the Effects of Practice.

Abstract Experiment 1 introduced a same–different letter discrimination task conducted with the inspection time (IT) procedure. The letter IT task was found to eliminate the use of systematic strategies, such as apparent movement and flash cues; in the past, such strategies have made the IT–IQ relation difficult to interpret. The IT–IQ relation was found to be as strong under the new task as that found under the typical task, with higher-IQ participants outperforming their lower-IQ counterparts across both IT tasks. Experiment 2 explored the effect of practice on IT, as assessed by the letter IT task, and the impact that it may have on the IT–IQ relation. Practice resulted in a significant linear increase in accuracy and an attenuation in the IT–IQ relation; this improvement cannot simply be attributed to more efficient use of response strategies. These findings suggest that at least one component of mental speed that is sensitive to practice may be an important factor underlying the correlation between IT and IQ.