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Cognitive abilities

Matrices: Items

Culture-fair matrices items
  • Identifying items is the first step towards solving a matrix.
  • Items that typically feature in questions include lines, shapes, patterns, sides, and parts.
  • Gaining familiarity with common items leads to faster solutions and dissolves some of the complexity of more difficult questions.

Culture-fair matrices: Items

Depending on the complexity of the question, there may be a single main item or additional secondary items.

Questions with multiple items usually feature smaller secondary shapes, such as stars and rings.

Culture-fair matrices items

  • Fig 1. Lines - Lines are usually horizontal, vertical and diagonal solid lines. Other variations include dotted, dashed, and bold, basically anything that differentiates one line from another.
  • Fig 2. Parts - Objects and shapes are sometimes divided into two or more parts. Sometimes components seem unrelated to the main shape; this may be due to operations that change or distort appearance.
  • Fig 3. Shapes - Shapes are usually solid squares, triangles, and other regular shapes. May also include irregular shapes, with sides and angles of varying lengths and sizes.
  • Fig 4. Sides - Some questions focus on the sides of shapes, especially with non-solid, flat plane objects.
  • Fig 5. Patterns - Horizontal/vertical/diagonal stripes, spirals, waves, dotted lines, dashed lines, and zig-zags. Shapes and objects may be patterned in multiple ways, with the design limited only by the author's imagination.

Common associations

Items are often associated with specific actions and properties.

Lines

Actions: Increase/decrease, rotate, intersect, cut.

Properties: Position, angle, size.

Shapes

Actions: Add/subtract, include/exclude common parts, rotate, move, mirror, match.

Properties: Item set, number sequence, result, constant.

Patterns

Actions: Add/subtract, include/exclude common parts, match.

Properties: Item set.

Sides

Actions: Add/subtract, increase/decrease, rotate, move, mirror, intersect, match, merge, cut, fold.

Properties: Number sequence, result, constant, position.

Parts

Actions: Add/subtract, include/exclude, rotate, move, mirror, intersect, match, merge, cut, fold.

Properties: Position, angle.