Analysis of adult age differences on the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices Test.

Abstract

The purpose of this project was to examine the nature of performance, and specifically, age-related performance, on the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM) Test (Raven, Court, & Raven, 1983). In the 1st of 2 studies, 2 tests presumed to measure each of 4 hypothesized components of the APM and 3 tests presumed to measure processing speed were presented to 165 young adults. On the basis of correlational and confirmatory analyses, 1 of the components was not included in Study 2. The 2nd study was designed to examine the influence of the 3 remaining components, processing speed, and working memory on the individual and age-related differences on the APM. Participants included 183 adults between the ages of 21 and 83. The results suggest that although all 3 components are important to performance on the APM, rule application tasks seem to hold the most promise in accounting for age-related variance on the APM.

Constraints on theories of cognitive aging

“…The task for the examinee is to use abstract reasoning to identify the pattern that provides the best completion of the missing cell. A recent study involving 221 adults between 20 and 80 years of age (Salthouse, 1993a) found that 32.2% of the variance in the Raven's score was associated with chronological age, and in a similar study (Babcock, 1994) 21.2% of the variance in the Raven's score was found to be related to age.There is clearly substantial scatter in the data of Figure 1, and the proportions of variance associated with age are always substantially less than 1.0. Because many researchers may not be comfortable thinking in terms of proportions of variance, it is reasonable to question the magnitude of the age-related effects in Type A or fluid measures ofcognitive functioning.…”

“…The task for the examinee is to use abstract reasoning to identify the pattern that provides the best completion of the missing cell. A recent study involving 221 adults between 20 and 80 years of age (Salthouse, 1993a) found that 32.2% of the variance in the Raven's score was associated with chronological age, and in a similar study (Babcock, 1994) 21.2% of the variance in the Raven's score was found to be related to age.…”

“…This speed-attenuation phenomenon is also evident with criterion variables often considered to reflect higher order cognitive functioning. For example, the age-related variance in performance on the Raven's Progressive Matrices Test was reduced by 82.0% after control of the letter comparison/pattern comparison speed index in a study by Salthouse (1993b) and by 60.8% in a study by Babcock (1994). The reduction in the age-related variance in the number ofcategories measure in the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test after control of this same speed index was 75.4% in a study involving 259 adults, reported by Salthouse, Fristoe, and Rhee (in press), and 85.5% in a study involving 197 adults, reported by Salthouse, Hancock, et al (in press).…”

Working Memory Capacity, Attention Control, and Fluid Intelligence

“…Importantly, Conway et al found that the simple PS tasks did not load on the Gf factor. In other studies (e.g., Ackerman et al, 2002;Babcock, 1994), complex PS tasks are found to correlate much more strongly with intelligence and WM than do simple PS tasks. Simply put, PS tasks correlate with intelligence to the extent that they tap attentional ability (Stankov & Roberts, 1997;Wilhelm & Schulze, 2002).…”

The Impact of a Video Game Intervention on the Cognitive Functioning, Self-Efficacy, Self-Esteem, and Video Game Attitudes of Older Adults

“…It was designed to examine the extent to which individuals can think clearly and make sense of complex information (known as "eductive" ability), and the ability to remember and reproduce information previously presented information (i.e., reproductive ability; Babcock, 1994;Raven, 2000). A large body of work has found this instrument to possess a high degree of reliability and validity among younger and older adults (Bors & Stokes, 1998;Babcock, 1994), and it has been employed with older adult populations (Basak, Boot, Voss, & Kramer, 2008). Each item is made up of a series of diagrams that follow a logical pattern; the diagram that would be in the final cell, however, is missing.…”