The Perceptual Reasoning Index, what it combined and why it split

0 The short answer

The Perceptual Reasoning Index (PRI) was the Wechsler composite for nonverbal problem solving on the WISC-IV (2003) and the WAIS-IV (2008), built from 3 subtests, and the WISC-V and the WAIS-5 replaced it with two separate scores, a Visual Spatial Index and a Fluid Reasoning Index. An old PRI therefore cannot be converted into either new score, because each new index keeps only some of the old tasks and was normed in a different era. An adult can still get a PRI from a psychologist who gives the WAIS-IV or the WASI-II, and the two replacement scores from a psychologist who gives the WAIS-5, or from ACIS, which has no PRI and reports a Visual Spatial Index from three subtests and a Fluid Reasoning Index from five (the Custom Test returns them for 15 and 25 dollars, and the Full Scale form returns both for 50 dollars in about 175 minutes, prices read October 29, 2026). The decisive limit is that a PRI, like any index, is a band around a score on a specific set of tasks, so an online, unsupervised, English only result describes your standing on those tasks and cannot diagnose anyone or stand in for a clinician's report.

1 What is the Perceptual Reasoning Index?

The Perceptual Reasoning Index is a composite standard score that summed the scaled scores of three nonverbal subtests, and the word "index" marks it as a derived number rather than the result of one test. Pearson's product page for the WAIS-IV, read October 29, 2026, describes a core battery of 10 subtests that focuses on four domains of intelligence: verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory and processing speed. The page on the WAIS-IV and its index scores walks through all four. Each domain yields one index, and the PRI is the one for nonverbal problem solving with pictures, shapes and designs.

The same page answers a question that readers of old reports often ask. In its frequently asked questions, Pearson says the Verbal Comprehension Index is the functional equivalent of the Verbal IQ and the PRI is the functional equivalent of the Performance IQ, and that the VCI and PRI should be used as the VIQ and PIQ were used. That sentence is the bridge between this page and the older history of Verbal and Performance scores, which the page on Verbal IQ versus Performance IQ covers in detail.

An index is made by adding the scaled scores of its subtests and converting the sum to a standard score with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. The page on how IQ scores are normed explains the conversion, and the page on why the standard deviation is 15 explains the units. Pearson's sample WAIS-IV score report, read the same day, shows the conversion at work: a sum of 42 across the three perceptual reasoning subtests became a PRI of 123. Because the number is a conversion of a sum, it carries the error of every task that went into it, and it is never the average of two percentiles.

The PRI no longer exists as a primary score on the current editions. Pearson's page for the WISC-V (published 2014, ages 6:0 to 16:11) says the PRI split into a Visual Spatial factor and a Fluid Reasoning factor, and Pearson's WAIS-5 overview brochure lists five domains for the 2024 test: verbal comprehension, visual spatial, fluid reasoning, working memory and processing speed. Neither document lists a perceptual reasoning domain. This page stays on the PRI as a score: what it combined, how it was reported, and how to read it today. The two abilities that replaced it belong to the pages on the Visual Spatial Index and the Fluid Reasoning Index.

A note on the name: "perceptual" in a Wechsler index title does not mean sensory perception. Pearson's own mapping of the WAIS-IV subtests to Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) terms, in the same FAQ, lists Block Design, Visual Puzzles and Picture Completion under visual perception and Matrix Reasoning and Figure Weights under fluid reasoning. The page on the CHC model lists the broad abilities, and the guide to what IQ measures explains why one number can only summarize so much.

2 Which subtests built the PRI on the WAIS-IV and the WISC-IV?

The PRI was always three subtests, but they were not the same three on every edition, so "my PRI" means different tasks depending on which test and which year produced it. The table sets the editions side by side. Every cell comes from the Pearson documents named in the final column, read October 29, 2026.

The WAIS-IV row needs one more detail from Pearson's FAQ. A clinician may substitute one supplemental subtest per index, with a maximum of two substitutions across the battery. Pearson's example is an examinee with motor impairment who is given Figure Weights in place of Block Design, and the choice has to be made before the scaled scores are known.

What do those subtests ask? Pearson's product page says Visual Puzzles contributes to the Perceptual Reasoning composite, is a more reliable measure than the Object Assembly subtest it replaced, and requires no motor skills, and that Figure Weights is a measure of quantitative and analogical reasoning that also requires no motor skills. Block Design is the construction task: the page on the Block Design test describes it as a timed task in which a person rebuilds a pictured pattern with physical blocks, and notes Pearson's guidance that it is not feasible online unless a professional facilitator handles the blocks. Matrix Reasoning is the pattern-completion task, which the ACIS page on the Matrix Reasoning subtest describes as studying a pattern, noticing how rows or columns change and inferring the missing element. Visual Puzzles asks whether separate pieces can be mentally combined into a finished whole, as the ACIS page on the Visual Puzzles subtest puts it. None of this page's descriptions reproduces an item.

Pearson's CHC mapping matters for the next sections. In its WAIS-IV FAQ, the three core perceptual subtests fall into two groups: Matrix Reasoning under fluid reasoning, and Block Design and Visual Puzzles under visual perception. A composite that averages two groups of different tasks is the central fact about the PRI, and it is the issue the later division addressed. The page on the WAIS-5 subtests lists all 20 tasks of the current edition and which seven build its Full Scale IQ.

3 Where did the PRI come from?

The PRI is the third name of a score that began as half of a pair, the Performance IQ, and each renaming moved the score away from "performance" and toward reasoning. Pearson's technical report 4.1 on the General Ability Index, dated January 2005 and written with Canadian norms, records the sequence for the children's scale. The original WISC (1949), the WISC-R (1974) and the WISC-III each reported a Full Scale IQ, a Verbal IQ and a Performance IQ. The WISC-III then introduced four index scores for narrower domains: the Verbal Comprehension Index, the Perceptual Organization Index (POI), the Freedom from Distractibility Index and the Processing Speed Index. With those, a WISC-III report could carry seven composites.

The report also explains why the extra scores existed. A practitioner could describe perceptual ability with the POI in place of the Performance IQ when Coding, a processing speed subtest, was discrepant from the perceptual organization subtests at a level that was unusual in the standardization sample. The example shows the weakness of the old pair: the Performance IQ carried a processing speed subtest alongside the perceptual tasks, so an unusual Coding score made the half score less descriptive of perceptual ability than the index.

The WISC-IV then did two things at once. According to the same report, the POI was renamed the Perceptual Reasoning Index "to reflect more accurately the increased emphasis on fluid reasoning abilities in this index", and the dual IQ and index structure was no longer used. Pearson says eliminating the dual structure reduced concerns about the influence of working memory and processing speed when summarizing verbal comprehension and perceptual reasoning abilities, and that the Full Scale IQ instead took in more of the influence of working memory and processing speed. The page on why the WAIS-IV dropped Verbal and Performance IQ tells the adult side of that story.

The WAIS-IV followed in 2008. Pearson's WAIS-IV page says the four-factor structure was first introduced as an option within the WISC-III (1991) and the WAIS-III (1997), and that the WAIS-IV strengthens it and removes its optional status. It lists the change from "dual IQ to Index Score structure" among its features, and it names Visual Puzzles and Figure Weights as new subtests that contribute to the Perceptual Reasoning composite. It also records what left. Picture Arrangement was dropped because it was lengthy to administer and its manipulatives were heavy and could be lost, damaged or administered inconsistently. Object Assembly was dropped for similar reasons, with the added points that Pearson wanted less dependence on time bonus points and that performance depended on motor skill.

A Performance IQ, a Perceptual Organization Index, a Perceptual Reasoning Index and a modern Visual Spatial or Fluid Reasoning Index are therefore scores with overlapping ancestry and different contents, which is why a person can hold two different "perceptual" numbers from two decades.

4 Why did the Wechsler scales split the PRI?

Pearson split the PRI because it judged that the combined score blurred two abilities, and independent researchers have since argued over whether the split scores measure two things. Pearson's position is the easiest to state. Its WAIS-5 product page, read October 29, 2026, lists "Separate visual spatial and fluid reasoning indexes" as a feature, describes them as a "purer measure of both constructs", and promises improved interpretive clarity. Its guide to the WAIS-5 ancillary index scores says the separation of the two scores "results in greater interpretive clarity".

The WISC-V page gives the reasoning behind that for children. It says the visual-spatial emphasis of the PRI obscured the strong relationship of Arithmetic to the fluid reasoning component of that scale, and that when more fluid reasoning and visual spatial subtests were present, together with a new visual working memory subtest, the PRI split into a Visual Spatial factor and a Fluid Reasoning factor. It also states what the new Fluid Reasoning Index changed in content: compared with the WISC-IV PRI, it emphasizes abstract conceptual reasoning more and construction abilities requiring visual-perceptual integration and visual-spatial reasoning less.

For adults, the evidence base was a factor analysis of the WAIS-IV standardization sample. Weiss, Keith, Zhu and Chen (2013), in the Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, compared four and five factor models in the WAIS-IV's 1,800 normative adults and 411 clinical adults. With all 15 subtests, both models were suitable and the five factor model fit better. In that model the PRI differentiated into two composites: a visual one built from Block Design, Visual Puzzles and Picture Completion, and a fluid reasoning one built from Matrix Reasoning, Arithmetic and Figure Weights. That is the pattern the WAIS-5 later adopted in its primary indices.

Independent analysts have read the same kind of data differently. Canivez and Watkins (2010), in Psychological Assessment, analyzed the WAIS-IV standardization sample with exploratory and higher order factor analyses and found that the subtests were properly associated with the four proposed factors, but that the second-order general factor accounted for large portions of total and common variance and the four first-order factors for small portions. They concluded that the WAIS-IV provides strong measurement of general intelligence and that clinical interpretation should be primarily at that level. For the WAIS-5, Canivez, Watkins, McGill and Dombrowski (2026), in Assessment, used the 2,020 person standardization sample and reported that exploratory results did not support separate Visual Spatial and Fluid Reasoning factors. A four-factor model that merged them into the former Perceptual Reasoning factor was the one supported. In the full text the authors write that, because one factor holds both sets of subtests, the name Perceptual Reasoning seems more appropriate, while warning against naming fallacies.

Two cautions keep this balanced. The dispute is about structure, not about whether the tasks are useful, and a factor analysis tells you how scores covary in one sample, not what any one person can do. The sibling pages carry the full debate: the page on the Fluid Reasoning Index owns the factor analytic argument, and the page on the Visual Spatial Index owns the Block Design dependence. For this page the practical point is that the score you hold depends on which model produced it.

5 How was a PRI calculated and reported?

A PRI was calculated by adding three scaled scores and converting the sum through the examinee's age band, and the report printed it with a percentile, a confidence interval and a descriptive label, so the number was always a band and not a point. Pearson's sample WAIS-IV score report, read October 29, 2026, shows the whole chain for one illustrative 70 year old examinee. Block Design had a scaled score of 13 (84th percentile), Matrix Reasoning 17 (99th) and Visual Puzzles 12 (75th). The three added to a sum of 42, which the table converted to a PRI of 123, at the 94th percentile, with a 95 percent confidence interval of 116 to 128 and the label "Superior". The same page shows a Verbal Comprehension sum of 52 becoming a VCI of 145 and a Full Scale sum of 154 becoming a Full Scale IQ of 139. The report notes that its intervals are based on the overall average standard errors of measurement. A sample report is a teaching example, not evidence about people in general.

The interval is the part readers skip. An interval of 116 to 128 is 12 points wide, our arithmetic on the printed bounds, and the page on reliability and validity explains why a score is best read as a band. Pearson's own precision figures show the same ordering. In a 2007 symposium on the General Ability Index by Zhu, Raiford and Coalson, hosted by Pearson, the WAIS-IV standard errors of measurement for all ages combined are 3.48 for the PRI, 2.85 for the VCI and 2.57 for the General Ability Index. The PRI was less precise than the VCI, and the six subtest General Ability Index was more precise than either.

Reports also compared the PRI with other indices. In the sample report, the PRI of 123 was 10 points below a Working Memory Index of 133, against a critical value of 10.18, so the difference was not significant, and the report gave a base rate of 23.4 percent for a gap of that size in the normative sample. A gap has to clear a critical value before it counts as reliable, and being reliable is not the same as being rare or meaningful. The page on index score differences works through both ideas.

Three standards from the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (AERA, APA and NCME, 2014), read in the open access edition on October 29, 2026, apply to every composite on a report like this. Standard 1.14 says that where composites are developed, the basis and rationale for them should be given, and that interpretation of subscores, score differences or profiles needs its own rationale and evidence. Standard 2.3 asks for reliability and precision estimates for each total score, subscore or combination of scores to be interpreted, and its comment adds that users need information about the reliability of composites formed from selected subtests. Standard 2.4 asks for the same kind of data when an interpretation emphasizes the difference between two scores.

The PRI also fed two other scores. On the WAIS-IV it was part of the Full Scale IQ, which Pearson builds from all 10 subtests of the four indices, and it supplied three of the six subtests of the optional General Ability Index. The sample report shows a General Ability sum of 94, which is the VCI sum of 52 plus the PRI sum of 42, converted to a GAI of 139. The page on the General Ability Index covers what that composite does and does not replace.

6 How do you read an old PRI beside a new WAIS-5 report?

An old PRI and a new Visual Spatial or Fluid Reasoning Index are not the same measurement on two dates, so the honest comparison is between sets of tasks and norm samples, not between three numbers. Five differences decide how far the comparison can go.

The tasks differ. The WAIS-IV PRI added Block Design, Matrix Reasoning and Visual Puzzles. According to Pearson's WAIS-5 brochure, the Visual Spatial Index adds Block Design and Visual Puzzles, and the Fluid Reasoning Index adds Matrix Reasoning and Figure Weights. Figure Weights was a supplemental subtest on the WAIS-IV, so a person who took the WAIS-IV with only the three core subtests has no score at all for one of the four tasks in the new pair. Picture Completion, the other WAIS-IV supplemental subtest, does not appear among the WAIS-5 subtests that Pearson lists in its comparison flyer.

The norms differ. Pearson's comparison flyer gives the WAIS-IV norming years as 2007 to 2008 and the WAIS-5 years as 2023 to 2024. Scores on Wechsler and Stanford-Binet tests have drifted upward over time. Trahan, Stuebing, Fletcher and Hiscock (2014), in Psychological Bulletin, pooled 285 studies with 14,031 people since 1951 and found a mean gain of 2.31 standard score points per decade, and 2.93 points per decade for 53 comparisons involving modern Stanford-Binet and Wechsler tests. Pearson's WAIS-IV page applies the idea to the move from the WAIS-III, saying the newer norms are slightly harder because of the Flynn effect. Applied naively to the 16 years between the two WAIS norming periods, the 2.93 figure would be about 4.7 points, our arithmetic, but that is an average across many tests and not a measured gap for these two. The direction is the useful part: the same performance should earn a somewhat lower score against the newer norms. The page on why a score drops between the WAIS-IV and the WAIS-5 covers that in full.

The subtests are blended differently. Take the sample report again: Block Design 13, Visual Puzzles 12 and Matrix Reasoning 17. The PRI blended all three into a 123. Split the way the WAIS-5 does, the two visual spatial tasks average 12.5 and the fluid reasoning task is 17, so the spread inside the old PRI was 4.5 scaled score points, our arithmetic on the printed scores. A PRI hides that spread by design, and the new pair would show it: Pearson's sample WAIS-5 report prints a Visual Spatial Index of 103 (95 percent interval 96 to 110) and a Fluid Reasoning Index of 105 (98 to 111) on separate lines, each with its own interval, though for a different sample examinee. The reverse step is not possible. Two new indices cannot be turned back into an old PRI: the old score was defined by a three subtest sum, the new ones by two subtest sums, and no conversion table appears in the Pearson documents opened for this page.

The companion scores moved too. The WAIS-IV General Ability Index used six subtests: Similarities, Vocabulary and Information from the verbal side, and the three PRI subtests. According to Pearson's guide to the WAIS-5 ancillary indices, the WAIS-5 General Ability Index uses five: Similarities, Vocabulary, Block Design, Matrix Reasoning and Figure Weights. Information and Visual Puzzles left it and Figure Weights joined. The Full Scale IQ also moved from 10 subtests to 7, in Pearson's comparison flyer. So a change in a Full Scale IQ between the editions can come from the changed subtest list or the norms, not only from the person.

The person differs. Age, health and practice change. Estevis, Basso and Combs (2012), in The Clinical Neuropsychologist, retested 54 participants (mean age 20.9, mean initial Full Scale IQ 111.6) on the WAIS-IV after 3 or 6 months and found that the Perceptual Reasoning Index improved by about 5 points, with similar gains at both intervals. They read those gains as practice effects, not intellectual change. That sample is young, high functioning and retested within months, so it does not predict what happens after years.

The workable question is therefore a narrower one: which old tasks reappear, how did the subtest scores on each compare, and what do the confidence intervals allow? The question "did my PRI go up or down?" cannot be answered from the numbers alone.

7 What can a PRI say, and what can it not say?

A PRI can describe how a person performed on three specific nonverbal tasks compared with same age peers in one norm sample, and it cannot name an ability, a cause or a diagnosis. Four limits bear on how to read one.

The first is that the PRI mixed abilities. Pearson's own CHC mapping places one core subtest under fluid reasoning and two under visual perception, so a PRI near the middle can come from three middle scores or from one very high score and two modest ones. The sample report above is the second case. For the abilities themselves, the page on fluid intelligence testing covers reasoning with unfamiliar problems, and the guide to the spatial IQ test covers visual spatial processing.

The second is that a general factor runs through the whole battery. Canivez and Watkins found in the WAIS-IV standardization sample that the second-order general factor accounted for large portions of the variance and the four first-order factors, the PRI among them, for small portions. That does not make the PRI meaningless. It means a PRI largely reflects overall standing, with a smaller specific part, and the specific part is the least certain thing on the page.

The third is speed and motor demands. The WAIS-IV FAQ describes the Block Design No Time Bonus process score as a way to see how much speed contributed to a Block Design score, and Pearson's WISC-V FAQ explains why the time bonus stays: removing it would cost the subtest its ceiling, much of its reliability and some of its correlation with general intelligence. The PRI was therefore partly a measure of how quickly a person worked. The page on the processing speed test covers the separate speed index.

The fourth is that none of this describes the reader. A PRI says nothing about talent in art, engineering or chess, and nothing about any condition. Group findings about the Wechsler indices are averages over many people and never a diagnosis of one person. The comment on Standard 1.14 says the same about scores in general: evidence for the validity of interpreting two separate scores would not necessarily justify interpreting the difference between them.

8 When is an old PRI still worth using, and when should it be retaken?

An old PRI remains a true record of how a person performed on a past date, but the Standards and the APA Ethics Code ask professionals not to base current decisions on results that are outdated for the purpose, and the decision belongs to the clinician, not to the reader. The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (AERA, APA and NCME, 2014) address this in the chapter on psychological testing and assessment. Their text on test selection says that for revised tests the editions currently supported by the publisher usually should be selected, that an earlier edition is occasionally appropriate (for longitudinal research, or when an earlier edition contains relevant subtests not included in a later one), and that professionals are responsible for guarding against reliance on test scores that are outdated, in which case retesting is appropriate. The comment on Standard 6.14 adds that outdated scores should generally not be used except for research, while scores from past years can be useful in longitudinal assessment, such as tracking function or cognition.

The American Psychological Association's Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, effective January 1, 2017, is plainer. Standard 9.08(a) says psychologists do not base assessment or intervention decisions or recommendations on data or test results that are outdated for the current purpose, and 9.08(b) says they do not base them on tests and measures that are obsolete and not useful for the current purpose. The words "for the current purpose" matter. A WAIS-IV PRI from five years ago may be adequate for a historical question and inadequate for a current one.

The WAIS-IV is still listed with materials for sale on its Pearson product page, read October 29, 2026, which is a statement about the catalog and not about how any professional should use it. Many reports in circulation carry a PRI. A reader holding one has three practical questions for the person who gave it:

• What was the purpose? An accommodation request, a school placement and personal curiosity need different levels of currency.
• How old is the result, and what has changed? Age, health, education and the tasks practiced since then all move scores.
• Does a new assessment need the same tasks? If the aim is to compare, the clinician may choose the WAIS-IV again, or a WAIS-5 and the knowledge that the PRI is not available on it.

For a person with no clinical question who is curious about the same tasks, the options in the next sections differ in cost, supervision and norms. None of them substitutes for a clinician's judgment about an old report.

9 What do perceptual reasoning test examples look like, and how should you sit them?

Perceptual reasoning test examples fall into four formats, construction, pattern completion, mental assembly and scale balancing, and describing the formats is as far as an honest guide can go, because an item shown without its norms gives you no score. This page describes formats and never reproduces an item from a real test.

• Construction. A person copies a pictured design with physical blocks against the clock. This is Block Design, and it is the format that cannot be moved onto a screen without changing it.
• Pattern completion. A person studies an incomplete arrangement of shapes and chooses the element that completes it. The rules are not stated and have to be inferred. This is the Matrix Reasoning format.
• Mental assembly. A person looks at a finished figure and works out which separate pieces would build it, without moving any piece. This is the Visual Puzzles format.
• Scale balancing. A person looks at balance scales that carry shapes and chooses what would balance an incomplete one. Pearson describes Figure Weights as a measure of quantitative and analogical reasoning, and the ACIS manual describes the format as quantitative relations expressed without numbers or language.

The WISC-IV PRI also used Picture Concepts, which the technical report names without describing, so this page does not describe it.

For an unsupervised session, the conditions matter more than they do in a clinic. The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (AERA, APA and NCME, 2014) say in the comment on Standard 3.4 that examinees working on older, slower equipment may be unfairly disadvantaged, that differences in processing speed or the fidelity of the visuals can let construct-irrelevant factors influence performance, and that results of unproctored administrations, where standardization cannot be ensured, should be interpreted with caution. In practice that means a clear screen of reasonable size, a quiet room, notifications silenced and a rested mind before any timed item begins. ACIS allows breaks, saves progress between subtests and gives 30 days to complete a form, so there is no reason to sit a timed task while tired. None of the ACIS subtests behind a Visual Spatial Index or a Fluid Reasoning Index presents its items as audio; the three that do are Digit Span, Alphanumeric Sequencing and Arithmetic.

Do not rehearse the format before a real attempt. The Estevis study above found practice gains on the WAIS-IV Perceptual Reasoning Index within months, so a run through similar puzzles would make a result describe familiarity as well as ability. That is a reading of the research, not an effect size for any ACIS subtest.

10 What are the options for taking a perceptual reasoning test today?

An adult who wants the tasks behind a PRI can sit them with a psychologist, who can still give a PRI on two instruments and the two replacement indices on a third, or take a normed online battery, and the options differ more in what they report than in how their puzzles look. The table sets them side by side. Pearson details were read on its product pages on October 29, 2026. ACIS prices and times were read the same day and can change. "Not stated" means the source read gave no figure, and "varies" means the answer depends on the product.

Two points about the table. The Pearson WASI-II brochure describes the PRI it reports as a measure of nonverbal fluid abilities and visuomotor and coordination skills, a description that carries the old mixture forward, and the WASI-II is a short battery that Pearson positions for screening and reassessment, so it is a short route to a PRI and not a full profile. The free online puzzle sets are described only in general terms because they vary so much. The page on the free IQ test covers the free route, and the page on where to take an IQ test covers the whole landscape, including in person options.

If the question is broader than one index, the page on IQ tests for adults covers the ACIS adult battery as a whole, and the page on the cognitive ability test covers another way into a normed adult profile. A reader whose real interest is a nonverbal instrument from a different publisher may prefer the page on the TONI-4 test.

11 What does ACIS offer in place of a PRI?

ACIS has no Perceptual Reasoning Index; it reports a Visual Spatial Index (VSI) from three subtests and a Fluid Reasoning Index (FRI) from five, which sample the two kinds of ability the old PRI mixed. The technical manual, read October 29, 2026, lists the subtests of each index, and the ACIS subtest pages describe the tasks.

The VSI holds three subtests. The Visual Puzzles subtest presents a completed figure and asks which three of six pieces would rebuild it; the manual lists 25 puzzles with item time limits. The Layer Rotation subtest shows transparent layers that each carry a tab, and the examinee turns each layer until its tab is at the top and picks the combined figure; the manual says it carries no words at all. The Spatial Comprehension subtest uses directional and geometric items with a knowledge sheet of required terms available before the subtest. The manual files all three under visual processing (Gv).

The FRI holds five subtests: Matrix Reasoning, Figure Weights, Visual Number Series, Logic Grid and Complex Relations. The manual describes Matrix Reasoning as an incomplete visual matrix with rules that must be induced, Figure Weights as balance scales with an incomplete side, Visual Number Series as typing the missing value in a sequence of numbers, Logic Grid as a partly filled grid solved by elimination, and Complex Relations as completing an abstract analogy by typing two words. The FRI is therefore not a nonverbal index, because two of its five tasks use numbers or words. The page on the fluid intelligence test covers the ability, and the page on the Matrix Reasoning subtest covers the format closest to the old PRI.

Which forms report the indices differs, and the manual's form table says so. The Fluid Reasoning Index is marked partial on Quick and Optimized and complete on Full Scale. The Visual Spatial Index is marked not available on Quick, partial on Optimized and complete on Full Scale. The report script that builds the example reports, read the same day, forms the Quick fluid reasoning index from Matrix Reasoning and Figure Weights, adds Logic Grid on Optimized, and forms the Optimized visual spatial index from Spatial Comprehension and Layer Rotation. The Custom Test returns a domain's full index when the domain is completed, so the three visual spatial subtests cost 15 dollars, the five fluid reasoning subtests 25 dollars, and both indices together 40 dollars for eight subtests. At 10 subtests the Full Scale form costs the same, so the Full Scale form is the better value only when the other domains are wanted too. The report states that an index is shown only for the exact set of subtests defined for it.

Three cautions follow. An ACIS VSI or FRI is not a WAIS-5 VSI or FRI: the items, the subtest lists and the reference groups differ, so the numbers should never be subtracted from one another. ACIS offers no combined PRI. And the free trial, which needs no card, lets a reader see the interface, but the VSI and the FRI come from a paid form or the Custom Test. The technical manual lists the composites and subtests; this page quotes none of its statistics.

12 Where ACIS sits, and what a buyer should do

ACIS sells a competing paid assessment, so treat this section as a disclosure: an ACIS Visual Spatial or Fluid Reasoning Index is an online, unsupervised, English only score that can describe your standing on those tasks and cannot diagnose, certify or replace a clinician's evaluation. ACIS is one option among those in the comparison above. It is not a WAIS-5, it does not produce WAIS-5 or WAIS-IV scores, and it is not for hiring decisions, school accommodations or admission to high IQ societies. The manual states that verbal and knowledge tasks are affected by English proficiency and educational exposure, and two of the five FRI tasks use words or numbers. Anything that needs a clinical, educational or legal answer belongs with a qualified examiner, who may give the WAIS-5 or, where the purpose allows, the WAIS-IV.

The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (AERA, APA and NCME, 2014) are the benchmark this page applies to every index, including ACIS's. Standard 1.14 asks that the basis and rationale for composite scores be given, Standard 2.3 asks for reliability and precision estimates for each score that is interpreted, and Standard 2.4 asks for them when differences between scores are emphasized. Standard 3.4 flags unproctored administration, and Standard 5.1 asks that users be given clear explanations of the characteristics, meaning and intended interpretation of scale scores and their limitations. The ACIS technical manual is where ACIS documents its own evidence, and a reader should check it against those standards and not against this page.

The American Psychological Association gives psychologists matching guidance in its Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. Standard 9.02 asks psychologists to use assessments in ways that fit the research on their usefulness and to use instruments whose validity and reliability have been established for the population tested, and Standard 9.06 asks them to take account of the purpose of the assessment and of test factors and personal, linguistic and cultural characteristics when interpreting results. Those standards bind psychologists, not a self administered online test, but they describe how any index should be read: with its purpose, its reference group and its limits in view.

What a buyer should do follows from that. If you hold an old PRI and only want to know where you stand on similar tasks today, the Custom Test with the three visual spatial subtests (15 dollars) and the five fluid reasoning subtests (25 dollars) returns both indices for 40 dollars, and the Full Scale form (50 dollars) adds the other four domains and a Full Scale IQ. Look at an example report first, because it shows how the index, percentile and interval are printed. ACIS states a refund rule that should be read literally: "Full refund within 5 days if the report does not deliver the features described at checkout or a technical issue prevents you from accessing your results." Prices were read on October 29, 2026 and can change. If the result will matter for a clinical or legal decision, the next step is a conversation with a psychologist, with an ACIS profile as a starting point and not as evidence.

13 Sources Behind This Page

All web pages were opened on October 29, 2026.

• Pearson. WAIS-IV product page (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, Fourth Edition, published 2008), and Pearson. WAIS-IV versus WAIS-5 comparison flyer (CE1013 EL 5/24). Product page; comparison flyer.
• Pearson. WAIS-5 product page (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, Fifth Edition, published 2024). Link.
• Pearson. Measure more with WAIS-5 (overview brochure, 2025). Link.
• Pearson. A guide to WAIS-5 ancillary index scores (flyer, C10536 EL 9/24). Link.
• Pearson. WISC-V product page (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Fifth Edition, published 2014). Link.
• Saklofske, D. H., Weiss, L. G., Zhu, J., Rolfhus, E., Raiford, S. E., and Coalson, D. (2005). WISC-IV Technical Report #4.1: General Ability Index, Canadian Norms. Harcourt Assessment. Link.
• Pearson. WASI-II product page and brochure (Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence, Second Edition, published 2011). Product page; brochure.
• Pearson. Sample score reports: WAIS-IV Score Report and WAIS-5 Score Report. WAIS-IV; WAIS-5.
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• Weiss, L. G., Keith, T. Z., Zhu, J., and Chen, H. (2013). WAIS-IV and clinical validation of the four- and five-factor interpretative approaches. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 31(2), 94 to 113. doi:10.1177/0734282913478030.
• Canivez, G. L., and Watkins, M. W. (2010). Investigation of the factor structure of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, Fourth Edition (WAIS-IV): Exploratory and higher order factor analyses. Psychological Assessment, 22(4), 827 to 836. doi:10.1037/a0020429.
• Canivez, G. L., Watkins, M. W., McGill, R. J., and Dombrowski, S. C. (2026). Construct validity of the WAIS-5: Complementary exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of the 20 primary and secondary subtests. Assessment (published online February 16, 2026). doi:10.1177/10731911251412219.
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• American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, and National Council on Measurement in Education (2014). Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. AERA. Open access edition.
• American Psychological Association (2017). Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, effective January 1, 2017. Link.

14 Frequently Asked Questions