Raven’s Adaptive, APM-III, SPM or Raven’s 2: Which Raven’s Test Have You Been Sent?
Raven’s Progressive Matrices comes in several versions. How to tell Raven’s Adaptive from APM-III, SPM and Raven’s 2, and what each means for your test.
Raven’s Progressive Matrices is one idea, a grid of shapes with a piece missing, sold in several versions that differ in length, clock and scoring. Much of what you find when you search describes long paper forms from decades ago. An employer’s link today opens something much shorter. This guide sets out which versions are in use, how to tell which one you have, and what changes in how you should sit it.
Raven’s Adaptive: the one employers are sold now
Pearson TalentLens’s current list of cognitive tests names one Raven’s product, Raven’s Adaptive. Pearson calls it the new version of Raven’s. It has 15 questions. Each is a three-by-three grid of geometric designs with one piece missing and eight pieces to choose from.
Two things set it apart from every older version. It has no time limit: Pearson’s studies put the average at 12 minutes, and nothing happens if you take longer. And it is adaptive. The first question is of average difficulty, a right answer brings a harder one and a wrong answer an easier one. You must answer all 15 to get a score. Pearson says it suits a wide range of roles and levels, because the questions settle at the level of the person taking it.
Raven’s APM-III: the advanced version, on a clock
APM stands for Advanced Progressive Matrices, the harder of the two classic tests, aimed at graduates, managers and future leaders. Its online form, APM-III, gives you four practice questions and then 23 scored ones, each with eight options, in 40 minutes. It is not adaptive. Your 23 are drawn from a bank so that every candidate’s set is about as hard as every other’s, and two candidates are unlikely to see the same set.
APM-III is not on TalentLens’s current list, but it has not gone away. Hogan Assessments offers Raven’s APM under licence from Pearson, and TalentLens France still publishes its APM-III guide. If you are applying for a management or graduate role and your invitation mentions a 40-minute limit, expect this one.
Raven’s SPM: gone from the list
The Standard Progressive Matrices was the version for entry-level roles: a fixed test, the same questions for everyone, with a time limit of about 45 minutes. TalentLens still had a page for it in April 2025. It is not among the cognitive tests TalentLens lists today. If an employer mentions the SPM, ask which online test its link opens. The Raven’s test TalentLens offers now is Raven’s Adaptive, which Pearson says suits a wide range of ability levels.
Raven’s 2 and the paper APM: not what employers send
Two more versions turn up in searches. Raven’s 2 is the Progressive Matrices Clinical Edition, for ages 4 to 90, given on Pearson’s clinical platform or on paper. The paper Advanced Progressive Matrices, untimed and taking 40 to 60 minutes, is sold the same way. Both sit in Pearson’s clinical catalogue and need a qualified buyer. Neither is what a recruitment link from TalentLens or Hogan opens, so their question counts and timings do not apply to you.
How to tell which Raven’s test you have
The invitation usually settles it. Look for the product name first, then the numbers.
What stays the same across versions
The questions themselves work the same way in every version, and so does the method. Read along a row and say what changes from cell to cell: the shape, the number, the shading, the size, the direction, the position. Check the rule on the next row. Look for a second rule running down the columns. Then describe the missing piece in words before you look at the options, because the wrong options are built to be one feature away from the right one.
The scoring idea is shared too. Neither online version reports the number you got right. Each question has its own difficulty, your answers become an ability score on a scale from -4 to +4, and the report shows that as a percentile against a norm group the employer chooses, up to the 99th. There is no published pass mark, and the report is a percentile, not an IQ.
Practising the version you were sent
Our Pearson TalentLens practice has both online versions with our own generated grids: Raven’s Adaptive, 15 adaptive questions with no clock, which is free to try, and Raven’s APM-III, 23 questions on a 40-minute countdown. If the role is not a management one, you may be sent the DAT Next Generation Abstract Reasoning test instead, which Pearson recommends to employers for those roles.
