We examined the structure of the new Block Patterns (BP) test from the Shipley Institute of Living Scale–Second Edition in a sample of Jamaican young adults. To date, very little has been published on the properties of this subtest’s items and scores. The BP test is similar in design to the Block Design subtest found in many cognitive ability assessments but uses a matching format that minimizes the need for excess materials and time. We analyzed the BP items using item response theory (IRT) methods. Although designed to measure a single construct, the analyses from this study found that the BP subtest is likely measuring more than a single construct, which confounds the interpretation of the instrument’s scores. Before the subtest is used clinically, more research should be done to purposefully investigate the effects of ancillary variables on its scores.
AllenM. J.YenW. M. (1979). Introduction to measurement theory. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.
2.
American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, & National Council on Measurement in Education. (2014). Standards for educational and psychological testing (4th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
3.
ArthurG. (1930). A point scale of performance tests. Oxford, UK: Commonwealth Fund.
4.
BafumiJ.GelmanA.ParkD. K.KaplanN. (2005). Practical issues in implementing and understanding Bayesian ideal point estimation. Political Analysis, 13, 171-187. doi:10.1093/pan/mpi010
5.
BeaujeanA. A.FirminM. W.AttaiS.JohnsonC. B.FirminR. L.MenaK. E. (2011). Using personality and cognitive ability to predict academic achievement in a young adult sample. Personality and Individual Differences, 51, 709-714. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2011.06.023
6.
BéguinA.GlasC. (2001). MCMC estimation and some model-fit analysis of multidimensional IRT models. Psychometrika, 66, 541-561. doi:10.1007/bf02296195
7.
BernsteinI. H.TengG. (1989). Factoring items and factoring scales are different: Spurious evidence for multidimensionality due to item categorization. Psychological Bulletin, 105, 467-477. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.105.3.467
8.
BoakeC. (2002). From the Binet-Simon to the Wechsler-Bellevue: Tracing the history of intelligence testing. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 24, 383-405. doi:10.1076/jcen.24.3.383.981
9.
BorsboomD. (2005). Measuring the mind: Conceptual issues in contemporary psychometrics. New York, NY: Cambridge.
10.
BrackenB. A.McCallumR. S. (1998). The Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test. Chicago, IL: Riverside.
11.
CaplanB.CafferyD. (1992). Fractionating block design: Development of a test of visuospatial analysis. Neuropsychology, 6, 385-394. doi:10.1037/0894-4105.6.4.385
12.
CarrollJ. B. (1993). Human cognitive abilities: A survey of factor-analytic studies. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
ChibS.GreenbergE. (1995). Understanding the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm. The American Statistician, 49, 327-335. doi:10.2307/2684568
15.
CollisN. L.KohnenS.KinoshitaS. (2012). The role of visual spatial attention in adult developmental dyslexia. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 66, 1-16. doi:10.1080/17470218.2012.705305
16.
ColomR.ContrerasM. J.ShihP. C.SantacreuJ. (2003). The assessment of spatial ability with a single computerized test. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 19, 92-100. doi:10.1027//1015-5759.19.2.92
17.
CornellE. L.CoxeW. W. (1934). A performance ability scale. New York, NY: World Book.
18.
CronbachL. J. (1946). Response sets and test validity. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 6, 475-494. doi:10.1177/001316444600600405
19.
DavenportC. B.SteggerdaM. (1929). Race crossing in Jamaica. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington.
20.
DavidsonW. M.CarrollJ. B. (1945). Speed and level components in time-limit scores: A factor analysis. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 5, 411-427. doi:10.1177/001316444500500408
21.
DeThorneL. S.SchaeferB. A. (2004). A guide to child nonverbal IQ measures. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 13, 275-290. doi:10.1044/1058-0360(2004/029)
22.
GelmanA.RubinD. B. (1992). Inference from iterative simulation using multiple sequences. Statistical Science, 7, 457-472. doi:10.1214/ss/1177011136
23.
GemanS.GemanD. (1984). Stochastic relaxation, Gibbs distributions, and the Bayesian restoration of images. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 6, 721-741. doi:10.1109/TPAMI.1984.4767596
24.
GiordaniB.RourkeD.BerentS.SackellaresJ. C.SeidenbergM.ButterbaughG.DreifussF. E. (1993). Comparison of WAIS subtest performance of patients with complex partial (temporal lobe) and generalized seizures. Psychological Assessment, 5, 159-163. doi:10.1037/1040-3590.5.2.159
25.
Grantham-McGregorS. M.PowellC. A.WalkerS. P.HimesJ. H. (1991). Nutritional supplementation, psychosocial stimulation, and mental development of stunted children: The Jamaican Study. The Lancet, 338, 1-5. doi:10.1016/0140-6736(91)90001-6
HaytonJ. C.AllenD. G.ScarpelloV. (2004). Factor retention decisions in exploratory factor analysis: A tutorial on parallel analysis. Organizational Research Methods, 7, 191-205. doi:10.1177/1094428104263675
28.
HEART Trust/National Training Agency. (2009). Unattached youth in Jamaica. Kingston, Jamaica: HEART/NTA Planning and Project Development.
29.
KillgoreW. D. S.GlahnD. C.CasasantoD. J. (2005). Development and validation of the Design Organization Test (DOT): A rapid screening instrument for assessing visuospatial ability. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 27, 449-459. doi:10.1080/13803390490520436
30.
KohsS. C. (1920). The block-design tests. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3, 357-376. doi:10.1037/h0074466
31.
KohsS. C. (1923). Intelligence measurement: A psychological and statistical study based upon the block design tests. New York, NY: Macmillan.
32.
LeeH. (1995). Markov chain Monte Carlo methods for estimating multidimensional ability in item response analysis (Doctoral dissertation). Available from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. (UMI No. 9708517)
33.
LodgeJ. K. (2013). The concurrent validity of the Shipley-2 and the WAIS-IV (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Wright State University, Dayton, OH
34.
LordF. (1956). A study of speed factors in tests and academic grades. Psychometrika, 21, 31-50. doi:10.1007/bf02289085
35.
LuY.SireciS. G. (2007). Validity issues in test speededness. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 26, 29-37. doi:10.1111/j.1745-3992.2007.00106.x
36.
LynnR.VanhanenT. (2012). Intelligence: A unifying construct for the social sciences. London, England: Ulster Institute for Social Research.
37.
ManleyD. R. (1963). Mental ability in Jamaica. Social & Economic Studies, 12, 51-71.
McDonaldR. P. (1999). Test theory: A unified treatment. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
40.
MillerJ. C.SkillmanG. D. (2008). Relationship of stimulus and examinee variables to performance on analogous visual and tactile block construction tasks. Applied Neuropsychology, 15, 140-149. doi:10.1080/09084280802160901
41.
OshimaT. C. (1994). The effect of speededness on parameter estimation in item response theory. Journal of Educational Measurement, 31, 200-219. doi:10.1111/j.1745-3984.1994.tb00443.x
42.
PatzR. J.JunkerB. W. (1999). Applications and extensions of MCMC in IRT: Multiple item types, missing data, and rated responses. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 24, 342-366. doi:10.3102/10769986024004342
43.
R Development Core Team. (2015). R: A language and environment for statistical computing [Computer software]. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.
44.
ReckaseM. D. (2009). Multidimensional item response theory. New York, NY: Springer.
45.
RevelleW. (2015). psych: Procedures for psychological, psychometric, and personality research ( [Computer program]. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University.
46.
ReynoldsM. R.HajovskyD. B.PaceJ. R.NiilekselaC. R. (2016). What does the Shipley-2 measure for children and adolescents? Integrated and conjoint confirmatory factor analysis with the WISC-IV. Assessment, 23, 23-41. doi:10.1177/1073191115572695
47.
RindlerS. E. (1979). Pitfalls in assessing test speededness. Journal of Educational Measurement, 16, 261-270. doi:10.1111/j.1745-3984.1979.tb00107.x
48.
RosanderP.BackstromM.StenbergG. (2011). Personality traits and general intelligence as predictors of academic performance: A structural equation modelling approach. Learning and Individual Differences, 21, 590-596. doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2011.04.004
49.
RoyerF. L. (1977). Information processing in the block design task. Intelligence, 1, 32-50. doi:10.1007/BF03039311
50.
SaxonT. F.HullD. M.FearonD. D.WilliamsL. O.TindigarukayoJ. K. (2012). How do Jamaica’s unattached youth view their career prospects and life skills?Comparative Education Review, 56, 421-447. doi:10.1086/664992
51.
ShengY. (2008). Markov chain Monte Carlo estimation of normal ogive IRT models in MATLAB. Journal of Statistical Software, 25(8), 1-15. doi: 10.18637/jss.v025.i08
52.
ShengY.HeadrickT. C. (2012). A Gibbs sampler for the multidimensional item response model. ISRN Applied Mathematics, 2012, Article 269385. doi:10.5402/2012/269385
53.
ShengY.WikleC. K. (2007). Comparing multiunidimensional and unidimensional item response theory models. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 67, 899-919. doi:10.1177/0013164406296977
54.
ShipleyW. C. (1940). A self-administering scale for measuring intellectual impairment and deterioration. Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied, 9, 371-377. doi:10.1080/00223980.1940.9917704
55.
ShipleyW. C.GruberC.MartinT.KleinA. M. (2010). Shipley Institute of Living Scale (2nd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Western Psychological Services.
56.
SpiegelhalterD. J.BestN. G.CarlinB. P.Van Der LindeA. (2002). Bayesian measures of model complexity and fit. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B (Statistical Methodology), 64, 583-639. doi:10.1111/1467-9868.00353
57.
TanzerN. K.GittlerG.EllisB. B. (1995). Cross-cultural validation of item complexity in a LLTM-calibrated spatial ability test. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 11, 170-183. doi:10.1027/1015-5759.11.3.170
58.
TsutakawaR. K. (1984). Estimation of two-parameter logistic item response curves. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 9, 263-276. doi:10.3102/10769986009004263
59.
TsutakawaR. K.JohnsonJ. (1990). The effect of uncertainty of item parameter estimation on ability estimates. Psychometrika, 55, 371-390. doi:10.1007/bf02295293
60.
van de VijverF.TanzerN. K. (2004). Bias and equivalence in cross-cultural assessment: An overview. Revue Européenne de Psychologie Appliquée, 54, 119-135. doi:10.1016/j.erap.2003.12.004
61.
VelicerW. F.EatonC. A.FavaJ. L. (2000). Construct explication through factor or component analysis: A review and evaluation of alternative procedures for determining the number of factors or components. In GoffinR. D.HelmesE. (Eds.), Problems and solutions in human assessment: Honoring Douglas Jackson at seventy (pp. 41-71). Boston, MA: Kluwer.
62.
VernonP. E. (1969). Intelligence and cultural environment. London, England: Methuen.
63.
WaiJ.LubinskiD.BenbowC. P. (2009). Spatial ability for STEM domains: Aligning over 50 years of cumulative psychological knowledge solidifies its importance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101, 817-835. doi:10.1037/a0016127
64.
WardL. C.BergmanM. A.HebertK. R. (2012). WAIS-IV subtest covariance structure: Conceptual and statistical considerations. Psychological Assessment, 24, 328-340. doi:10.1037/a0025614
65.
WechslerD. (1939). The measurement of adult intelligence. Baltimore, MD: Williams & Wilkins.
66.
WechslerD. (2003). Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (4th ed.). San Antonio, TX: Pearson.
67.
WechslerD. (2008). Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (4th ed.). San Antonio, TX: The Psychological Corporation.
