Item responses of two samples each of 622 normal and 573 educable mentally retarded children, 6 to 15 years of age, on Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices were submitted to a principal components analysis and varimax rotation. The following four factors were obtained: continuity and reconstruction of simple and complex structures, discrete…

Groups of retarded and nonretarded children were investigated as they learned three rules underlying problems adapted from the Raven Progressive Matrices Test: rotation, imposition, and subtraction. Results were seen as consistent with theories that emphasize transfer flexibility as one potential source of individual and comparative differences in…