Teaching the underlying rules of figural matrices in a short video increases test scores

How to Get Better: Taking Notes Mediates the Effect of a Video Tutorial on Number Series

“…Taking a theoretical perspective, these results imply that showing the processes of how to solve number series items in a video tutorial effectively increases performance scores in number series test items. Taking a more practical perspective, test takers in the real world might search for and watch a corresponding video tutorial—easily available via online search engines and video platforms—while preparing for an upcoming important intelligence assessment to raise their corresponding test scores effectively and efficiently (see also Schneider et al 2020 ).…”

“…Studies investigating video tutorials showed significant intelligence test-score increases for popular rule-based task types, such as figural matrices or number series of up to large effect sizes (e.g., Schneider et al 2020 , d ≥ 1.19; see also Loesche et al 2015 ; Schneider and Sparfeldt 2021 ). Correspondingly, increased test scores might lead to an overestimation of a person’s true cognitive ability, possibly resulting in better chances for selection as well as false selection and admission decisions.…”

“…Recent studies showed that watching a short video tutorial in which important characteristics of rule-based intelligence tasks are taught is an effective and efficient approach to increase the corresponding test scores. For example, students of an experimental group who watched a short video tutorial teaching the underlying rules of figural matrices tasks reached higher test scores in an afterwards-administered figural matrices test than students of a control group who watched a task-irrelevant video before the test (e.g., a nutrition video, Schneider et al 2020 ; see also Loesche et al 2015 ; Krautter et al 2021 ; Levacher et al 2021 ). Similarly, students of an experimental group who watched a short number series video tutorial based on the mentioned illustration model subsequently solved more number series items than students of a control group who watched a task-irrelevant video tutorial ( d = .44, Schneider and Sparfeldt 2021 ).…”

Test Preparation in Figural Matrices Tests: Focus on the Difficult Rules

“…Arendasy et al, 2016). In connection with figural matrices, Loesche et al (2015) and Schneider et al (2020) demonstrated that respondents perform better when being taught all rules used in the test. A shortcoming of these studies is that there was no experimental condition in which only some of the rules were taught.…”

“…A deeper understanding of the influence of test preparation on the test performance of respondents is therefore warranted. In the context of figural matrices tests, test preparation consists of teaching the respondents the rules that are commonly used to construct the items (Loesche et al, 2015;Schneider et al, 2020). Figure 1 shows an example of a matrix item used in the current study.…”