How to Gain Eleven IQ Points in Ten Minutes: Thinking Aloud Improves Raven's Matrices Performance in Older Adults

ABSTRACT Few studies have examined the impact of age on reactivity to concurrent think-aloud (TA) verbal reports. An initial study with 30 younger and 31 older adults revealed that thinking aloud improves older adult performance on a short form of the Raven's Matrices (Bors & Stokes, 1998, Educational and Psychological Measurement, 58, p. 382) but did not affect other tasks. In the replication experiment, 30 older adults (mean age = 73.0) performed the Raven's Matrices and three other tasks to replicate and extend the findings of the initial study. Once again older adults performed significantly better only on the Raven's Matrices while thinking aloud. Performance gains on this task were substantial (d = 0.73 and 0.92 in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively), corresponding to a fluid intelligence increase of nearly one standard deviation.

[1]  Kevin M. Brooks,et al.  Thoughts beyond words : When language overshadows insight , 1993 .

[2]  Steven W. Evans,et al.  Thinking aloud during problem solving: Facilitation effects , 1991 .

[3]  K. A. Ericsson,et al.  Protocol Analysis: Verbal Reports as Data , 1984 .

[4]  D. Bors,et al.  Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices: Norms for First-Year University Students and the Development of a Short Form , 1998 .

[5]  Robert H. Logie,et al.  Planning Processes and Age in the Five-disc Tower of London Task , 1999 .

[6]  Lynn Hasher,et al.  Working Memory, Comprehension, and Aging: A Review and a New View , 1988 .

[7]  Gabriel J. Biehal,et al.  The Effects of Concurrent Verbalization on Choice Processing , 1989 .

[8]  K. A. Ericsson,et al.  Protocol analysis: Verbal reports as data, Rev. ed. , 1993 .

[9]  N. Charness.  Search in chess: Age and skill differences. , 1981 .

[10]  T. Salthouse.  The processing-speed theory of adult age differences in cognition. , 1996, Psychological review.

[11]  Verbal compared with manipulative solution of an apparatus-problem. , 1957, The American journal of psychology.

[12]  T. Perfect,et al.  What underlies the deficit in reported recollective experience in old age? , 1997, Memory & cognition.

[13]  Steven W. Evans,et al.  The effect of thinking aloud on the problem-solving performance of bright, average, learning disabled, and developmentally handicapped students , 1991 .

[14]  Arthur D. Fisk,et al.  Designing for Older Adults: Principles and Creative Human Factors Approaches , 2004 .

[15]  J. Raven.  Advanced progressive matrices : sets I and II , 1962 .

[16]  M. M. Johnson,et al.  Thinking about strategies during, before, and after making a decision. , 1993, Psychology and aging.

[17]  K. A. Ericsson,et al.  Verbal reports as data. , 1980 .

[18]  Douglas A. Bors,et al.  The effect of practice on Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices , 2003 .

[19]  D. B. Tarr,et al.  Verbalization, experimenter presence, and problem solving. , 1968, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[20]  R. Gagne,et al.  A study of the effects of verbalization on problem solving. , 1962, Journal of experimental psychology.

[21]  L. Riby,et al.  The effects of age and task domain on dual task performance: A meta-analysis , 2004 .

[22]  Eric J. Johnson,et al.  The validity of verbal protocols , 1989, Memory & cognition.