Raven's Matrices Research Articles

The Working Memory Questionnaire: A scale to assess everyday life problems related to deficits of working memory in brain injured patients

The objective of the present study was to develop a scale designed to assess the consequences of working memory deficits in everyday life. The Working Memory Questionnaire (WMQ) is a self-administered scale, addressing three dimensions of working memory: short-term storage, attention, and executive control. The normative sample included 313 healthy participants. The patient group included 69 brain injured patients, who were compared to a subsample of 69 matched healthy controls. The questionnaire was found to have a good internal consistency, both in healthy participants and in patients with brain injury (Cronbach's alpha = .89 and .94, respectively). In healthy participants, significant effects of age (p < .0001) and education (p < .01) were found, due to more complaints in participants aged 60 or more and (unexpectedly) in those aged below 30, and for less educated participants, below high school level. The WMQ was found to have the sensitivity to discriminate patients from matched controls, in the three domains (p < .0001). A good concurrent validity was found with the Cognitive Failure Questionnaire and the Rating Scale of Attentional Behaviour (Spearman's Rho = .90 and .81, respectively, both ps < .0001). In addition, the total complaint score significantly correlated with neuropsychological measures of working memory (visual spans and short-term memory with interference) and with global intellectual efficiency (Raven's Matrices) but not with digit spans. Further studies are needed to measure the internal structure of the scale, and to compare self- and proxy-ratings.

Solving the Raven Progressive Matrices by adults with intellectual disability with/without Down syndrome: Different cognitive patterns as indicated by eye-movements

Raven matrices are used for assessing fluid intelligence and the intellectual level of groups with low intelligence. Our study addresses qualitative analysis of information processing in Raven matrices performance among individuals with intellectual disability with that of their typically developed (TD) counterparts. Twenty-three adults with non-specific intellectual disability (NSID), 15 adults with Down syndrome (DS) and 35 children with TD matched for mental age, participated. Participants solved the Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices and five items from the Raven Standard Progressive Matrices while having their eye movements monitored. The overall percent of correct answers was significantly higher for the TD group compared to two ID group. Comparison of the eye movement pattern of each group indicated that the TD group spent more time on the matrices before shifting to the options, than the two ID groups. The TD group made significantly less switches from one rejoins to another, than the ID groups. The difference in the scanning pattern between the TD and the ID groups is interpreted as a reflection of two different types of strategies, Constructive matching and Response elimination, respectively. There were no differences in eye scanning between participants with NSID and those with DS.

Functional connectivity of dissociation in patients with psychogenic non-epileptic seizures

IntroductionPsychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES) resemble epileptic seizures, but lack epileptiform brain activity. Instead, the cause is assumed to be psychogenic. An abnormal coping strategy may be exhibited by PNES patients,...

Reduplicative Paramnesia: Dramatic Improvement After Neurosurgical Treatment

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article LettersFull AccessReduplicative Paramnesia: Dramatic Improvement After Neurosurgical TreatmentCarmela Gerace, M.D.Carmela GeraceSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:1 Jul 2011AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail To the Editor: Reduplicative paramnesia (RP) is a peculiar, uncommon disturbance of memory characterized by a subjective certainty that a familiar place has been duplicated. This syndrome was described for the first time by pick in 19031 and subsequently reported in a variety of neurologic and psychiatric conditions.Case ReportThe patient was a 72-year-old, left-handed woman. No diseases were recently reported. She was admitted to the neurological department because of her gait problem and “confusional state.” A neurological examination revealed only a mild unsteadiness of gait. She was able to provide a coherent history of her hospitalization. Bedside mental status examination was normal, but after only 10 minutes of conversation, she started talking about “her two houses,” which she had discovered in the last month: “two identical houses on the same street,” she said, “same floor, same furniture;” she had been asking why she found herself having two houses, and she thought maybe the government gave them to her or someone arranged it; however, she acknowledged that she was unable to resolve these contradictions. Her housemaid told us that sometime in the last month, while she was sitting, the patient talked about “the other house” and that she wanted to go “to her real house.” Looking for her dresses in the wardrobe, she said: “I have 10 coats here and another 10 in the other house.” CT and MRI exams performed on the first day of hospitalization disclosed a large lesion in the right temporal lobe, enhanced by contrast medium, compatible with large intracranial meningioma with mild mass effect on the lateral right ventricle. Blood exam, ECG, blood pressure, and temperature were normal. On the third day, temporal craniotomy was performed, and the meningioma was completely removed. One day after the operation the patient said: “my mind began to be clean now; maybe I know now I [do not] have two houses.” After 1 week, she was able to talk about “the story of the two houses.” She did not know why this story had happened to her: “probably it was the tumor in my head,” she finally concluded. Neuropsychological testing was obtained after surgery: the patient was alert and collaborative; on MMSE she obtained 29/30, and results were in normal range for the performed tests (digit span, babcock test, and colored raven matrices).DiscussionRP has been previously considered as being due to a combination of bilateral frontal lobe and right hemisphere lesions,2,3 but the specific pathophysiology of the syndrome has not been completely explained, although it has been hypothesized that RP may develop as a result of a temporal lobe lesion disrupting communication between the visual cortex and both visual processing areas in the inferior temporal lobe and visual memory in the nondominant parahippocampal region.4 We can hypothesize that reduplication in this patient was related to isolated dysfunction of visuolimbic stream: her house was not “her house” because she had temporarily lost the sense of familiarity for her house, and she could recognize it explicitly, but not implicitly; because she did not “feel” that house as her house; therefore, it must be another house, and then she had two houses.The idea of an isolated and temporary dysfunction of visuo-limbic pathways is supported by sudden improvement after neurosurgical treatment for temporal lobe meningioma and by absence of other mental and cognitive symptoms in the anamnestic report and in the neuropsychological examination.Dept. of Neurology, Azienda Ospedaliera S. Camillo-Forlanini, Rome Italy e-mail: [email protected]it1. Pick A : Clinical studies. Brain 1903; 26:242–267Crossref, Google Scholar2. Benson DF , Gardner H , Meadows JC : Reduplicative paramnesia. Neurology 1976; 26:147–151Crossref, Medline, Google Scholar3. Devinsky O : Delusional misidentifications and duplications Neurology 2009; 72:80–87Crossref, Medline, Google Scholar4. Budson AE , Roth HL , Rentz DM , et al.: Disruption of the ventral visual stream in a case of reduplicative paramnesia. Ann N Y Acad Sci 2000; 911:447–452Crossref, Medline, Google Scholar FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited ByClinical Neurology and Neurosurgery, Vol. 181A Case of Reduplicative Paramnesia for HomeCognitive and Behavioral Neurology, Vol. 29, No. 3 Volume 23Issue 3 Summer 2011Pages E7-E7 Metrics PDF download History Published online 1 July 2011 Published in print 1 July 2011

Neuropsychological pattern during gluten free diet (GFD) in elderly coeliac patients

IntroductionPrevious studies suggested a correlation between celiac disease (CD) and cognitive impairment, but only few described these characteristics in the elderly, all based on a small number of patients or...

Alexithymia and aging: a neuropsychological perspective.

Consistent with the emotional changes associated with later life, higher alexithymia scores are widely reported in older adults, but their significance has not been fully examined. We posited that association between alexithymia and poorer neurocognition would support the deficit nature of alexithymia in later life. Widely used neurocognitive tests assessing the relative integrity of the left and right hemisphere functions were used to examine the extent to which alexithymia of older age is associated with poor left or right hemisphere functioning. Healthy community-dwelling volunteers (20 young and 20 elderly subjects) were studied with the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale. Neurocognitive competence was assessed using a neuropsychological battery measuring attention, language, memory, visuospatial abilities, and executive functions. Neurocognitive abilities were strongly age-related and indirectly correlated with alexithymia. Alexithymia total score appeared to be uniquely predicted by Raven Matrices and Rey's Figure Recall. These results support the deficit hypothesis alexithymia of older age.

The role of working memory and updating in Coloured Raven Matrices performance in typically developing children

A large body of evidence indicates that working memory correlates with performance on fluid intelligence tasks such as Raven's tests. However, light still needs to be shed on which particular aspects of working memory might be most critically related to fluid intelligence, and whether working memory updating—which appears crucial to intellectual functioning—has a prominent role. To address these issues more closely, our study presented participants (aged 5–11 years) with the Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices, an updating task, and a battery of working memory tasks. Our findings confirm that working memory indeed plays an important part in explaining fluid intelligence, in particular that updating information in working memory is critical to fluid intelligence in the context of development.

A working memory test battery for MATLAB

We present a battery of four working memory tasks that are implemented using MATLAB and the free Psychophysics Toolbox. The package includes preprocessing scripts in R and SPSS to facilitate data analysis. The four tasks consist of a sentence-span task, an operation-span task, a spatial short-term memory test, and a memory updating task. These tasks were chosen in order to provide a heterogeneous set of measures of working memory capacity, thus reducing method variance and tapping into two content domains of working memory (verbal, including numerical, vs. spatial) and two of its functional aspects (storage in the context of processing and relational integration). The task battery was validated in three experiments conducted in two languages (English and Chinese), involving more than 350 participants. In all cases, the tasks were found to load on a single latent variable. In a further experiment, the latent working memory variable was found to correlate highly but not perfectly with performance on Raven's matrices test of fluid intelligence. We suggest that the battery constitutes a versatile tool to assess working memory capacity with either English- or Chinese-speaking participants. The battery can be downloaded from www.cogsciwa.com ("Software" button).

Measures of Emotional and Motivational Processes Activated by Stress or Comfort Conditions

Under stress conditions, obtained in the field or experimentally induced, changes occur in the nature and intensity of affective processes (emotions, motivations). Symmetrical changes occur under opposite (comfort) conditions. One of the first procedures for determining temporary stress states consists of administering difficult logical tasks (15 minutes), with erroneous or ambiguous feedback and social pressure. For example, some very difficult Raven Matrices were individually assigned to participants. The first two authors later found another procedure equally effective and even more advantageous for certain aspects: the “drawing recollection” of personal stressful experiences. The corresponding comfort treatments are, firstly, a progressive relaxation session in penumbra; or, in the second case, the “drawing recollection” of personal pleasant and positive experiences. To assess the emotional changes, we prepared seven-point bipolar scales centering on the main opposing emotions. As regards motivations, we used a list of nine motivational systems [1]. The whole set of items made up the so-called Self-Appraisal Scales, administered before and after a specific treatment, thereby obtaining a measure through the differences between the two successive assessments. Factor analyses were conducted for selecting the main emotional and motivational factors. Affective reverberations on cognitive processes were also studied and measured.

How to Gain Eleven IQ Points in Ten Minutes: Thinking Aloud Improves Raven's Matrices Performance in Older Adults

ABSTRACT Few studies have examined the impact of age on reactivity to concurrent think-aloud (TA) verbal reports. An initial study with 30 younger and 31 older adults revealed that thinking aloud improves older adult performance on a short form of the Raven's Matrices (Bors & Stokes, 1998, Educational and Psychological Measurement, 58, p. 382) but did not affect other tasks. In the replication experiment, 30 older adults (mean age = 73.0) performed the Raven's Matrices and three other tasks to replicate and extend the findings of the initial study. Once again older adults performed significantly better only on the Raven's Matrices while thinking aloud. Performance gains on this task were substantial (d = 0.73 and 0.92 in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively), corresponding to a fluid intelligence increase of nearly one standard deviation.

Exploring the relationships between trait emotional intelligence and objective socio‐emotional outcomes in childhood

Trait emotional intelligence (trait EI or trait emotional self-efficacy) is a constellation of emotion-related self-perceptions and dispositions located at the lower levels of personality hierarchies. This paper examines the validity of this construct, as operationalized by the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire-Child Form (TEIQue-CF), in primary schoolchildren. The main aim was to examine the construct validity of trait EI in middle and late childhood by exploring its relationships with cognitive ability, emotion perception, and social behaviour. The sample comprised 140 children aged between 8 and 12 years (M=9.26 years, SD=1.00 year; 63 girls) from two English state primary schools. Pupils completed the TEIQue-CF, the standard progressive matrices (SPM), the guess who peer assessment, the social skills training (SST) test, and the assessment of children's emotion skills (ACES) during formal class periods. The procedure took approximately two hours with a short break between assessments. Trait EI scores were positively related both to peer-rated prosocial behaviour and to overall peer competence. They also predicted emotion perception accuracy beyond overall peer competence. As hypothesized in trait EI theory, the construct was unrelated to IQ (Raven's matrices) and academic performance. Trait EI is successfully operationalized through the TEIQue-CF and has important and multifaceted implications for the socialization of primary schoolchildren.

Exploring possible neural mechanisms of intelligence differences using processing speed and working memory tasks: An fMRI study

To explore the possible neural foundations of individual differences in intelligence test scores, we examined the associations between Raven's Matrices scores and two tasks that were administered in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) setting. The two tasks were an n-back working memory ( N = 37) task and inspection time ( N = 47). The subjects were members of the Aberdeen Birth Cohort 1936, aged in their mid–late 60s when tested for this study. Performance on both tasks was correlated significantly with scores on Raven's Matrices. In the inspection time task there were regions with significant correlations between the neural activity (BOLD response) and performance but not between BOLD response and scores on Raven's Matrices. In the working memory task there were no significant correlations between BOLD response and either performance or scores on Raven's Matrices. Moreover, there was almost no mediation of the Raven's Matrices versus n-back and inspection time scores correlations by the respective BOLD response. These findings partially replicate important aspects of a prominent report in this field [Gray, J.R., Chabris, C.F., & Braver, T.S. (2003). Neural mechanisms of general fluid intelligence. Nature Neuroscience, 6, 316–322.], but have also extended the those finding into both a unique population and a novel functional task.

Variation in Raven's Progressive Matrices scores across time and place

The paper describes a cross-cultural and historical meta-analysis of Raven's Progressive Matrices. Data were analyzed of 798 samples from 45 countries ( N = 244,316), which were published between 1944 and 2003. Country-level indicators of educational permeation (which involves a broad set of interrelated educational input and output factors that are strongly related to economic development), the samples' educational age, and publication year were all independently related to performance on Raven's matrices. Our data suggest that the Flynn effect can be found in high as well as low GNP countries, although its size is moderated by education-related sample and country characteristics and seems to be smaller in developed than in emerging countries.

Is emotional intelligence impaired in ecstasy-polydrug users?

Previous findings report use of the drug ecstasy (MDMA) to be associated with lower emotional intelligence (EI), and compromised functioning in brain areas responsible for emotion. This study explored the relationship between ecstasy use, EI, mood and parenting styles. Questionnaire measures of drug use, lifestyle, parenting style and EI were obtained, with separate IQ measures for fluid intelligence (Ravens matrices) and pre-morbid intelligence [National Adult Reading Test (NART)]. Current mood measures were obtained from an adjective checklist. The sample comprised 78 ecstasy/polydrug users, 38 cannabis only users and 34 non-drug users. Drug use was categorised at three levels (non-user, cannabis-only user and ecstasy-polydrug user). Factorial ANOVA using drug use as an independent variable showed no significant group effects in EI. EI showed significant correlations with current mood that were positive for arousal and negative for both anxiety and depression. EI was also significantly and positively correlated with the perceived degree of parental control. Regression analyses showed that these relationships remained significant after controlling for differences in IQ, age, gender, and ecstasy use. Adverse mood effects specifically associated with ecstasy use were significantly related to lower EI, and were independent of IQ, age and gender. Higher EI was significantly associated with ecstasy-related precautions used when taking this drug. Contrary to earlier findings, ecstasy-polydrug users did not differ from non-users on EI. However, self-reported ecstasy-related mood disturbances were related to lower EI, with the compromising of orbitofrontal cortical functioning being possible here.

The combined burden of cognitive, executive function, and psychosocial problems in children with epilepsy: a population‐based study

The combined burden of psychosocial (Achenbach scales), cognitive (Raven matrices), and executive function (EF) problems was studied in a population-based sample of 6- to 12-year-old children with epilepsy (n=162; 99 males, 63 females) and in an age- and sex-matched control group (n=107; 62 males, 45 females). Approximately 35% of the children with epilepsy had severe non-verbal cognitive problems. In those that did not, mild cognitive problems (26% vs 11%, p=0.005), EF problems (31% vs 11%, p<0.001), and psychosocial problems (45% vs 10%, p<0.001) were each much more common than among controls. Having problems in two or all three of these areas simultaneously was more frequent among the children with epilepsy (14% vs. 3%, p<0.001 and 4% vs 0%, p<0.001 respectively). Excluding those having remote symptomatic epilepsy aetiology did not change the problem load significantly for the children with epilepsy with the important exception that having severe non-verbal problems was approximately halved from 35 to 18%. In 30 children with benign epilepsy of childhood with centrotemporal spikes, mild cognitive problems were somewhat more common, but psychosocial and EF problems were similar compared with control children.

The quest for item types based on information processing: An analysis of Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices, with a consideration of gender differences

Various taxonomies of Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM) items have been proposed in the literature to account for performance on the test. In the present article, three such taxonomies based on information processing, namely Carpenter, Just and Shell's [Carpenter, P.A., Just, M.A., & Shell, P., (1990). What one intelligence test measures: A theoretical account of the processing in the Raven Progressive Matrices test. Psychological Review, 97, 404–431.] as completed by Mackintosh and Bennett [Mackintosh, N.J., & Bennett, E.S., (2005). What do Raven's Matrices measure? An analysis in terms of sex differences. Intelligence, 33, 663–674.], DeShon, Chan and Weissbein's [DeShon, R.P., Chan, D., & Weissbein, D.A., (1995). Verbal overshadowing effects on Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices: Evidence for multidimensional performance determinants. Intelligence, 21, 135–155.], and Dillon, Pohlmann and Lohman's [Dillon, R.F., Pohlmann, J.T., & Lohman, D.F., (1981). A factor analysis of Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices freed of difficulty factors. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 41, 1295–1302.], were examined to assess the extent to which they fit APM data from two large samples of university students. Gender differences hypotheses based on the examined APM item taxonomies were also tested. Results indicate that none of the tested models achieved a good fit, and that item difficulty seemed to be the main determinant of the APM's dimensionality. Gender differences analyses also provided inconsistent support for the information-processing based taxonomies. Results are discussed in terms of potential statistical artifacts and of the weak reliability of the proposed item classifications.

Contribution of Metabolic Syndrome Components to Cognition in Older Individuals

Recent evidence suggests that the metabolic syndrome and inflammation affect cognitive decline in old age and that they reinforce each other. However, it is not known what the roles of the individual components of the metabolic syndrome on cognition are. The sample consisted of 1,183 participants in the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam who were aged 65-88 years. Metabolic syndrome (U.S. National Cholesterol Education Program definition) and its individual components and the inflammatory markers C-reactive protein (CRP) and alpha1-antichymotrypsin (ACT) were assessed. Cognitive assessments included general cognition (Mini-Mental State Examination), memory (verbal learning test), fluid intelligence (Raven's Matrices), and information processing speed (coding task). Of the sample, 36.3% had metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome was significantly associated with all cognitive measures (P < 0.05). Of the individual components, hyperglycemia was most strongly and significantly associated with cognitive function (multivariate adjusted models; B values, indicating differences in scores between both groups, ranging from -0.38 to -1.21). There was a significant interaction between metabolic syndrome and inflammation on cognition (P < 0.01-0.09). Metabolic syndrome was negatively associated with cognition in subjects with high inflammation (highest tertile for both CRP and ACT; B values ranging from -0.86 to -1.94, P < 0.05), whereas an association was absent in subjects with low inflammation (B values ranging from -0.10 to -0.70). Subjects with metabolic syndrome showed poorer cognitive performance than subjects without metabolic syndrome, especially those with high levels of inflammation. Hyperglycemia was the main contributor of the association of metabolic syndrome with cognition.

Exploring the nature of facial affect processing deficits in schizophrenia

Schizophrenia has been associated with deficits in facial affect processing, especially negative emotions. However, the exact nature of the deficit remains unclear. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether schizophrenia patients have problems in automatic allocation of attention as well as in controlled evaluation of facial affect. Thirty-seven patients with schizophrenia were compared with 41 control subjects on incidental facial affect processing (gender decision of faces with a fearful, angry, happy, disgusted, and neutral expression) and degraded facial affect labeling (labeling of fearful, angry, happy, and neutral faces). The groups were matched on estimates of verbal and performance intelligence (National Adult Reading Test; Raven's Matrices), general face recognition ability (Benton Face Recognition), and other demographic variables. The results showed that patients with schizophrenia as well as control subjects demonstrate the normal threat-related interference during incidental facial affect processing. Conversely, on controlled evaluation patients were specifically worse in the labeling of fearful faces. In particular, patients with high levels of negative symptoms may be characterized by deficits in labeling fear. We suggest that patients with schizophrenia show no evidence of deficits in the automatic allocation of attention resources to fearful (threat-indicating) faces, but have a deficit in the controlled processing of facial emotions that may be specific for fearful faces.

Neuropsychological profile of adult patients with Niemann–Pick C1 (NPC1) mutations

Niemann-Pick type C disease is a fatal neurovisceral disorder linked to dysregulation in cholesterol processing. A medication for this disease is currently being tested in clinical trials. However, there is a lack of information on neuropsychological testing parameters for this disease. One aim of this pilot study was to evaluate a test battery that could be used to assess cognitive deficits in different stages of the disease. A second aim was to determine whether specific functional deficits are associated with certain disease stages. Eight men and two women (19-40 years of age) harbouring mutations in the gene coding for the cholesterol trafficking protein NPC1 were put through the same test battery independently of their disease stage. The external staging criterion was based on a five-step clinical scale. Trail Making tests A & B and verbal fluency were sensitive indicators at early stages of NPC. Corsi Block-Tapping, Mini Mental Status, Find Similarities and Clock Drawing showed abnormal results in patients with advanced disease. The Grooved Pegboard, Trail Making and Mosaic tests were unsuitable in advanced disease due to impaired fine motor skills. We observed that visuospatial working memory was less affected by the neurodegenerative process than verbal working memory. The series of tests used here could be supplemented by the severe impairment battery and Raven matrices tests for patients with advanced disease.

Reply to Colom and Abad (2006)

Mackintosh and Bennett [Mackintosh, N. J., Bennett, E. S. (2005). What do Raven's Matrices measure? An analysis in terms of sex differences. Intelligence, 33, 663–674] reported that male students obtained higher scores than females on Raven's items that required for their solution addition/subtraction or distribution of two rules, but not on other items. Colom and Abad (2006) suggest that this result was based on a small sample ( N = 97), and may not be reliable. In fact it was a replication of an earlier study employing 129 students. We have since confirmed it in a new sample of 242 students — a total of 468. Whatever the reasons for the difference between these results and those reported by Colom and Abad, a small sample size is probably not one of them.