The Advanced Progressive Matricesis the hard Raven’s. Pearson positions it for adults and adolescents of above-average ability, from age twelve, and says it spreads scores in the top twenty percent of the population. Every item is a 3x3 with the bottom-right cell missing and eight options below, black on white, the shape of the Standard test’s Sets C to E and harder.
Two sets, two jobs
Set I is twelve items that sample every theme of the full test. In practice it familiarises people with the task and sorts them roughly into the bottom tenth, the middle, and the top tenth, which decides whether the Standard test or Set II is given next. Set II is the test: thirty-six items, cut down in 1962 from the 1947 form’s forty-eight after twelve items added nothing to the spread of scores.
The one Raven’s with a published rule analysis
Carpenter, Just and Shell analysed the APM item by item in 1990 and found five rules that account for it, plus the thing that separates strong from weak solvers: working out which figural elements belong to which rule. The next lesson teaches the five under the course’s own names. Difficulty, in their account, is the number of rules an item carries and the type of rule, with distribution of two the hardest.
Sources: Pearson (US and UK APM pages: population, timing, scoring); Carpenter, Just and Shell 1990 (primary: item shape, eight options, the five rules); Yang et al. 2023 (the sets’ history and use); the item counts are from the literature, Pearson states none. Read 2026-09-21. This is independent practice material. It is not a Pearson product and uses none of Raven's items. Figures come from Pearson's own pages and the primary literature; where only third parties state a figure, the text says so.