title: Comparing the latent structure of Raven's educational coloured progressive matrices among young children and older adults: A preliminary study.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The aim of the present study was the comparison of the general cognitive ability (g) between young children and older adults through the investigation of the latent structure qualitative changes in [R] Educational Coloured Progressive Matrices (CPM) from age to age, using Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFA) and testing a conventional unidimensional model.
  
  
  METHODS
  The sample consisted of 42 kindergarten and 56 elementary school students (age range: 5-8 years) and 118 new-old adults and 27 old-old adults (age range: 61-88 years). The participants' cognitive abilities were examined in: (a) the Raven's Educational CPM test, and (b) the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE).
  
  
  RESULTS
  CFA applied to data of the total sample, elementary school students subsample and new-old adults subsample, indicating that individual variability across [R] CPM measured variables (total scores for each of the three sets) can be modeled by one latent variable (a single underlying factor). The same pattern of [R] CPM latent structure was not verified for the subsamples of kindergarten students and old-old adults, since the variance of a single underlying factor was not found to be statistically significant.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The results support the existence of a different factor structure in [R] Educational CPM between first- to second- grade elementary school students and new-old adults, on the one hand, and kindergarten students and old-old adults, on the other. This difference could possibly reflect the underdevelopment of inductive reasoning and executive functioning in the group of kindergarten students and the disorganization of them in the group of old-old adults.
authors.affiliation: Department of Early Childhood Education, University of Ioannina, Greece. gpapanto@uoi.gr.
authors.forename: Georgia
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Papantoniou
authors.forename: Despina
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Moraitou
authors.forename: Magda
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dinou
authors.forename: Effie
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Katsadima
authors.forename: Eugenia
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Savvidou
authors.forename: Evangelia
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Foutsitzi
authors.forename: Elvira
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Masoura