In addition, the performance advantage in the puzzle form was only demonstrated by children of the same mental age, some with ID and some developing normally, which could suggest that the puzzle form maintained attention and motivation in those with severely limited attentional resources.
Participants were required to select a piece from six alternatives that completed the pattern for each item by either pointing to their chosen response in the book form or by removing their chosen response and placing it in the missing section of the matrix in the puzzle form.
Hence, this study supports the use of the puzzle form in clinical and educational research settings in place of the book form, as a better measure of reasoning ability in children with severe ID and in clinical settings for monitoring treatment progress, as a component of a battery of tests.
We hypothesized that, in Study 1, TD children would show comparable performance in the book and puzzle form of the RCPM, irrespective of which form was completed first on a counterbalanced cross over design over a three week period.
Unlike the board form, the puzzle form is presented in a folder with each item displayed individually on one page and each piece secured with Velcro to minimize weight, distractions and ease and time of administration.
As displayed in Figure 3, completion rate for the puzzle form (76.2%) was greater than for the book form (40%), regardless of clinical group.
The second study demonstrated a significantly higher performance and completion rate for the puzzle form compared to the book form in the ID population.
A second study tested performance and completion rate for the puzzle form compared to the book form in a sample of 164 children with ID.
A Mann-Whitney test showed a significant difference in RCPM score between performance on the book and puzzle form regardless of clinical group, Z = -5.54, p <.05.
