Koh’s Block Design Test, also known as the Koh’s Block Test, is a performance test used alone and/or in combination with other tests to assess the cognitive abilities of different age groups. It was first designed and developed in 1920 by psychologist Samuel C. Kohs, a student of Lewis Terman, building on earlier and similar designs. The test taker must, using 16 colored cubes, replicate the patterns displayed on a series of test paper cards. The test was motivated by a belief that it could easily be administered to persons with language or hearing disabilities. However, it has found a multitude of other implications.

The Koh’s Block Design Test has been adapted into sections in several current IQ tests. The test continues to be used in research extensively to measure executive functioning and learning, consistent with the original design of the test. This has made the Kohs Block Test useful for assessing the effects of aging, drug use, and brain research, among other areas.

The test data is mainly used to assess constructive thinking, which in turn involves spatial analysis. According to the results of testing, you can identify a number of psychopathologies and mental disorders. Patients with damage to the right hemisphere of the brain find successful completion of the task to be extremely difficult, so the test is often used to diagnose right hemisphere damage.

This article develops an interesting point scale of intelligence on the basis of a performance test consisting of block designs built up from the colored blocks manufactured by the Embossing Company. Seventeen designs of increasing complexity were used with a time limit on each varying from 1 ½ to 4 minutes. The actual working time of the test is 30 to 40 minutes. Both time and moves are recorded, and the results are reduced to a single score by a system of points. The maximum score is 131 points. Norms (more or less theoretical?) have been worked out from 0 at five years to 131 at twenty years. The correlations between Binet scores and Block-Design scores range around .80 (a remarkably close agreement for different types of mental tests). The correlation between teachers’ estimates and the Block-Design I.Q. is only one-half as high as that between teachers’ estimates and the Binet I.Q. The proposed test seems to be easily administered, easily scored, and capable of use in a large variety of different ways.

Reference:

1. Psych Bulletin 18:06:00407. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

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