Raven's progressive matrices performance in adults with traumatic brain injury

Raven's Progressive Matrices (RPM), a widely used test of reasoning, is sensitive to aging, but it has not proven to be helpful in the assessment of acquired focal or lateralized brain damage. Clinical experience suggests that the test is insensitive to traumatic brain injury (TBI), but the data are difficult to interpret because of rapid inflation of norms over time (the Flynn effect). In examining data from 64 adult patients with TBI who were administered the Standard RPM between 1981 and 1989, we used previous and subsequent norms conjointly to adjust for the Flynn effect. Anterograde and retrograde adjustment of norms led to highly convergent results. After adjustment for the Flynn effect, RPM performance was comparable to Wechsler IQ, significantly below estimated premorbid IQ, and nearly 2 SD above performance on 2 TBI-sensitive neuropsychological tests. We conclude that RPM performance is neither more nor less sensitive than Wechsler IQ to the consequences of TBI in the adult, but erroneous conclusions are likely to be reached if the Flynn effect is not taken into account.