Recreating Raven's: Software for systematically generating large numbers of Raven-like matrix problems with normed properties

Raven’s Progressive Matrices is a widely used test for assessing intelligence and reasoning ability (Raven, Court, & Raven, 1998). Since the test is nonverbal, it can be applied to many different populations and has been used all over the world (Court & Raven, 1995). However, relatively few matrices are in the sets developed by Raven, which limits their use in experiments requiring large numbers of stimuli. For the present study, we analyzed the types of relations that appear in Raven’s original Standard Progressive Matrices (SPMs) and created a software tool that can combine the same types of relations according to parameters chosen by the experimenter, to produce very large numbers of matrix problems with specific properties. We then conducted a norming study in which the matrices we generated were compared with the actual SPMs. This study showed that the generated matrices both covered and expanded on the range of problem difficulties provided by the SPMs.