The TONI-4 nonverbal test: what it measures and what an adult can take
The TONI-4 is a language-free reasoning test that PRO-ED publishes as a print kit for a qualified examiner to give one person at a time. This page sets out what the publisher says about it, what a nonverbal estimate does and does not mean for an adult, how its scores are read and how old its norms are, and which real options an adult can take, with prices dated October 29, 2026.
Each TONI-4 form has 60 abstract items and takes 15 to 20 minutes, for ages 6 to 89.
0 The short answer
The TONI-4 (Test of Nonverbal Intelligence, Fourth Edition) is a language-free reasoning test from PRO-ED, with two equivalent forms of 60 abstract figural items, norms for ages 6 years 0 months to 89 years 11 months and an administration time of 15 to 20 minutes, and it is given to one person at a time by a qualified examiner, so an adult cannot take it as a free online test or from a PDF. What an adult can take is a different instrument: ACIS offers a normed online battery with its Matrix Reasoning subtest in the Quick form (15 dollars, about 45 minutes), and the Optimized form (30 dollars, about 110 minutes) adds Layer Rotation, a subtest whose manual says it carries no words at all (prices read on October 29, 2026). The decisive limit is that one task type yields one estimate of nonverbal abstract reasoning, normed in a publication dated 2010, which is not a profile of abilities and not a diagnosis. ACIS is online, unsupervised, not clinical and in English only.
60 items
In each of the two equivalent forms of the TONI-4, all abstract figural, according to PRO-ED's product page.
15 to 20 minutes
Administration time that PRO-ED lists for the TONI-4, given to one person at a time.
2,272
People in the normative sample, residing in 33 states, according to PRO-ED.
The TONI-4 is the fourth edition of a norm referenced test of reasoning by Linda Brown, Rita J. Sherbenou and Susan K. Johnsen, published by PRO-ED as a print kit marked 2010, and it is designed so that neither the items nor the answers require words. PRO-ED's page for the complete kit, which we opened on October 29, 2026, describes the TONI-4 as a practical, easy-to-use, norm-referenced instrument. It lists the age range as 6 years 0 months through 89 years 11 months, with the labels school age, adult and later adulthood, and it names the administration format as individual. There are two forms, A and B, which the page calls equivalent, and each has 60 items. The page gives the administration time as 15 to 20 minutes.
PAR, which also sells the test, repeats the numbers on its TONI-4 page (opened October 29, 2026) and adds two details. Its frequently asked questions say that one form takes about 15 minutes, and its feature list says the items are arranged from easy to difficult and that the administration format is print. Pearson's store page and Hogrefe's UK shop page, both opened the same day, give the same age range and time. We use PRO-ED's own page as the primary statement of what the test is, and the other pages as dated confirmation.
The kit is a set of printed materials. PRO-ED lists an examiner's manual, a picture book, a volume of critical reviews and research findings covering 1982 to 2009, and 50 answer booklets and record forms for each of the two forms. The page says the normative data were all newly collected for this edition. The Buros Center for Testing lists the test in its catalog of test reviews, as a product reviewed in The Nineteenth Mental Measurements Yearbook, with a purpose statement that calls it a test of aptitude, intelligence, abstract reasoning and problem solving in a completely language-free format (Buros listing, opened October 29, 2026). That listing is a shop entry for a review, not the review itself, so we read nothing from the review text.
Two facts about this page's reach. It describes the TONI-4 only from the publisher and distributor pages and the research named below, and it never reproduces items, answer keys or score tables. A related nonverbal test, the CTONI-2, has its own page on this site, the CTONI-2 test guide, and this page stays on the TONI-4.
2 How Does a Language-Free Administration Work?
A language-free administration removes words from the items and from the answers, not from the room: the examiner still gives directions, and the examinee answers by pointing, nodding or blinking. PRO-ED's page says the test taker responds with simple but meaningful gestures such as pointing, nodding or blinking, and that verbal and pantomime directions are provided. It lists the directions in English and seven other languages: Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Tagalog. PAR's page adds that the directions are simple and oral. So the claim that the test is "nonverbal" describes what the examinee needs to do, which is to look at figures and indicate a choice, and does not mean that nobody speaks.
The items are abstract and figural. PRO-ED's page says they are void of pictures or cultural symbols, and that each item draws on one or more of eight characteristics: shape, position, direction, rotation, contiguity, shading, size and movement. Easier items involve one or two of the characteristics, and harder items involve several. The page also states that floor effects have been eliminated and that bias related to gender, ethnicity, disability and race was analyzed, but the page gives no values, and we do not repeat a claim of freedom from bias on the strength of a sentence. What the page supports is that the items are built from figure features and carry no pictures or cultural symbols.
Three details are not stated on the pages we read. The pages do not say how many answer choices each item has, whether the test is timed item by item, or how the examiner decides when to stop. Those details sit in the examiner's manual, which we did not open, and an adult who needs them should ask the examiner or the publisher.
The reason this design exists is fairness to people for whom language is a barrier to showing reasoning. The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (AERA, APA and NCME, 2014), which we read in their open access edition, say in Standard 3.2 that test developers are responsible for minimizing the potential for tests to be affected by construct-irrelevant characteristics such as linguistic, communicative, cognitive, cultural or physical ones. The comment on that standard adds that unnecessary linguistic or other demands in the stimulus or response requirements can impede some individuals in demonstrating their standing on the intended construct. A gesture response and figural items are one way to meet that duty. They do not make a test culture free, a distinction that the page on culture fair IQ tests explains, and they do not remove the examiner's judgment about whether the person understood what was asked.
3 What Does the TONI-4 Measure, in CHC Terms?
The TONI-4 samples one slice of ability, abstract reasoning with figures, which the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) model files under fluid reasoning (Gf), and the publisher's pages describe no knowledge, quantitative, memory or speed score of the kind a battery with several indices reports. The publisher's distributors describe what it measures in plain words. Pearson's page says it offers an assessment of intelligence, aptitude, abstract reasoning and problem solving, and Hogrefe's page says the same. The authors of a 2021 study in BMC Psychiatry, discussed below, describe the TONI-4 as a measure of fluid intelligence. In CHC terms that is Gf, the ability to solve unfamiliar problems, detect relationships and apply rules without relying mainly on learned facts, as the page on the CHC model lays out.
The page on the ACIS Matrix Reasoning subtest describes the same family of tasks in CHC terms: a person studies a pattern, infers the rule and chooses what completes it, and the page links strong performance to efficient induction and pattern abstraction. Matrix Reasoning shows 32 visual matrices with a missing piece, allows 30 seconds per item and stops after three consecutive errors. That is an ACIS task, not a TONI-4 item, and we draw the parallel only at the level of the ability. The page on pattern recognition tests explains why an inductive reasoning task of this kind shares only part of its variance with general intelligence, which is the reason a single reasoning score cannot stand for everything.
Abstract reasoning and problem solving are the stated purpose
Crystallized knowledge, Gc
Learned vocabulary and general information
No words in the items or answers, so not sampled
Quantitative knowledge, Gq
Number problems and mathematical knowledge
Not stated; no number content is described
Visual processing, Gv
Visualization and spatial relations
The items are figural and include rotation and position as features, but no separate visual score is described
Working memory capacity, Gwm
Holding information and reordering it
Not stated
Processing speed, Gs
Perceptual speed under time pressure
Not stated; a speed score is not described
The table needs one caution. The pages we read give one overall score and do not break it into CHC abilities, so the fourth column reports what is stated and does not rank how much each ability contributes. Because the eight item characteristics include rotation, position and direction, the items are visual spatial in content as well as reasoning in demand, but that is our reading of the feature list and the publisher does not say how the two contribute. For contrast, Layer Rotation in ACIS is a visual processing task: its page places it in Gv, in the narrow abilities of visualization and speeded rotation, and says that because the instruction is carried by a mark on the layer rather than a sentence, the task places very little load on language. The page on what IQ measures and the guide to cognitive domains explain how a general factor and these broad abilities fit together.
4 Who May Buy and Give the TONI-4?
The TONI-4 is a restricted test, so the people who may buy the kit are professionals who can show training in giving and interpreting assessments, and an adult who wants a TONI-4 score needs one of them, not a download. PRO-ED lists the kit as Test Level B, and PAR and Pearson list the same level on their pages (all opened October 29, 2026). PRO-ED's qualifications policy, opened the same day, says Level A products need no special qualification and that Level B products may be bought by people who meet one of four listed routes. Among them are a graduate degree in a closely related field with ethics training in clinical assessment, certification or full membership in a professional organization that requires relevant assessment training, and a degree or license in healthcare or allied healthcare. Level C, which the policy says requires a high level of expertise in test interpretation, is a separate tier.
The same rule exists outside the United States. Hogrefe's UK page for the TONI-4 lists the qualification level as Level 2, links to its test user qualification guidance and says buyers must provide evidence of eligibility, such as a completed application form or a copy of a degree. The page on the KBIT-2 test explains how qualification levels work in general and why a restricted test is sold that way, so this page does not repeat it.
For cost, a sentence of its own. The complete TONI-4 kit is listed at 477 dollars on the PRO-ED, PAR and Pearson pages we read on October 29, 2026, and Hogrefe lists it at 469 pounds excluding VAT. PRO-ED also sells the pieces separately, with the examiner's manual at 116 dollars and the picture book at 185 dollars. Those are prices for a clinic or school to equip itself. None of the pages we read lists a fee for being tested, because that fee is set by whoever gives the test, and it usually sits inside a wider evaluation. The page on how official IQ testing routes work and what each costs covers what an adult actually pays.
Why a restricted kit matters to a reader is test security. The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing say in Standard 6.7 that test users have the responsibility of protecting the security of test materials at all times, and the comment adds that concerns with inappropriate access include inappropriate disclosure of test content. A test whose items circulate loses the comparison with its norms. That is the reason this page describes the format and never the content, and it is also the reason an adult should be wary of any site that offers the "real" TONI-4 items.
5 How Is the TONI-4 Scored, and How Do You Read the Result?
The TONI-4 reports age-based standard scores with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, percentile ranks and stanines, so the result is a statement about where one person stands against others of the same age, not a count of right answers. Pearson's page lists exactly those three score types. The comparison group is the normative sample that PRO-ED describes: 2,272 people residing in 33 states, with stratification by four geographic regions, gender, race and ethnicity, parental education and family or household socioeconomic status. PAR's page says the normative data are representative of U.S. Census statistics. The pages do not state how many adults were in that sample or how they were spread across age groups, so we cannot say how thinly the adult decades are covered.
Reading a standard score is the same exercise as on any normed test. A score of 100 is the mean of the age group, and one standard deviation is 15 points, so 115 sits one standard deviation above the mean, which on a normal curve is about the 84th percentile (arithmetic on the normal curve, not a TONI-4 table). The pages on how IQ scores are normed and on why the standard deviation is 15 explain the scale, the page on IQ score versus percentile explains why the two cannot be averaged, and the IQ percentile calculator and a calculator for how rare a given IQ is turn a score into a rank and a rarity. A caution applies to any conversion: those tools assume a normal distribution and the 15 point scale, and a stanine is a coarser banding of the same information, so convert from the standard score and not from the stanine.
How precise is the score? The pages we read give no reliability or error values, so we turn to the one peer reviewed study of the TONI-4's repeatability in adults that we found. Chen, Lee, Yu, Cheng, Chao and Hsieh, in a 2021 paper in BMC Psychiatry, tested 103 patients with schizophrenia in stable condition, aged 20 years or older with a mean age of 46.7 years, twice, four weeks apart. The first session used Form A and the second used Form B. They report an intra-class correlation coefficient of 0.73 (95 percent confidence interval 0.62 to 0.81), a standard error of measurement of 5.1 percent and a minimal detectable change of 14.2 percent, with a trivial practice effect (Cohen's d of minus 0.03). The authors list two limits: a convenience sample from one psychiatric center in southern Taiwan, and the use of alternate forms, which may lead to underestimating test-retest reliability compared with a single form.
What does 0.73 mean for one person? It is a group statistic from a clinical sample, and it is not the manual's reliability for the general population, which we did not read. As an illustration of scale only, our arithmetic is that if a reliability of 0.73 held on the 15 point scale, the standard error of measurement would be about 7.8 points and a 95 percent band would run about 15 points either side of an obtained score. That is a hypothetical, not a TONI-4 statistic, but it shows why one standard score should be read as a band and not as a point. The page on reliability and validity explains why a score can be consistent without measuring what a reader hopes it measures.
6 How Old Are the Norms, and Does It Matter for an Adult?
A norm referenced score is only as current as the sample behind it, and the TONI-4's norms come from a 2010 publication, so an adult tested today is compared with people who were tested at least 16 years ago. PRO-ED marks the kit with the year 2010 and says all new normative data were collected for it. The page does not give the year of data collection. The comparison across time matters because average scores on intelligence tests have risen over the decades. Trahan, Stuebing, Fletcher and Hiscock, in a 2014 meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin, pooled 285 studies with 14,031 participants in which people took two intelligence tests with different normative bases. They report a mean gain of 2.31 standard score points per decade (95 percent confidence interval 1.99 to 2.64), and 2.93 points per decade for modern Stanford-Binet and Wechsler tests. The open access text of the paper says a test will overestimate an individual's score by an average of about 0.3 points per year after the norming year, and it cautions that the working magnitude and its error are not well established.
Applying that to the TONI-4 takes care. The meta-analysis is about the pooled tests and not about this one, we did not find a study of the Flynn effect on the TONI-4, and fluid reasoning tests need not move at the same rate as the tests in the pooled estimate. Our arithmetic is only an order of magnitude: at 0.3 points per year, the 16 years from 2010 to 2026 would be about 5 points, and the real figure for this test could be smaller or larger. The practical point is that an adult who gets a TONI-4 standard score should treat a result near a cut score, for example near 70 or 130, as less firm than the printed number suggests.
Two professional documents say the same in their own words. The Standards comment on Standard 5.9 says that test publishers should ensure up-to-date norms are available or provide evidence that older norms are still appropriate, and that it remains the test user's responsibility to avoid inappropriate use of out-of-date norms. The American Psychological Association's APA Guidelines for Psychological Assessment and Evaluation (2020), which we read from a local copy because the apa.org address refused our automated request, add in Guideline 8 that the agedness of the norms and the continued relevance of the construct being measured can be important considerations in test selection. Neither document says the TONI-4's norms are outdated. They say a user should ask, and an adult should ask the examiner which edition and which norms were used.
7 What Does Published Research Show About the TONI-4 With Adults and Others?
The published research that uses the TONI-4 is mostly small and mostly with children, adolescents or clinical groups, so it supports using the test as a nonverbal ability measure in those settings and gives an adult little basis for reading a single score as a full verdict. The Chen study above is the main adult paper we found, and its convergent validity correlations are moderate in size, although the authors judge them good. The same 103 patients also took the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and a tablet based Symbol Digit Modalities Test (T-SDMT). The correlation of the TONI-4 with the MoCA was 0.61 and with the T-SDMT 0.35, which the authors describe, across the two, as small to moderate. They describe the TONI-4 as a measure of fluid intelligence and write that both the TONI-4 and the Raven's matrices use geometric patterns that are not culturally dependent. That last point is their statement of the design rationale and not a finding of the study.
Other studies use the TONI-4 as a measure of general nonverbal ability alongside a main question. Yeboah and colleagues, in a 2024 cross sectional study in BMC Public Health, used it to assess cognitive function in 250 adolescents in Kumasi, Ghana, as part of a study of iron deficiency anemia. Labruyère and colleagues, in a 2013 paper in Research in Developmental Disabilities, measured cognitive capacity with the TONI-4 in 19 children with neurological gait disorders and found that performance in a rehabilitation game correlated moderately with it (r = 0.50). Klein and colleagues, in a 2021 paper in Frontiers in Psychology, gave it to 86 participants aged 8 to 16 as an estimate of intelligence to control for in a study of processing speed tests. We read the abstracts of these three papers. They show the TONI-4 being used as a quick covariate in applied research, and they were not designed to test the TONI-4.
What the research does not give is a body of adult evidence of the kind a reader might expect from a long established test: we did not find, in the sources we opened, an adult study that compares the TONI-4 with a full Wechsler battery. The absence is a statement about what we opened, not proof that no such study exists, and the manual may report one. The reader's takeaway is that the TONI-4 is a reasonable tool for its stated purpose, which is a quick language-free estimate when language is a barrier, and that the evidence for reading its score as an adult's overall intelligence is thinner than for a full battery. Standard 9.4 in the Standards puts the duty on the user: when a test is used for a purpose for which little validity evidence is available, the user is responsible for documenting the rationale and obtaining evidence. The pages on the CTONI-2 and on the Cattell culture fair test cover two other instruments of this kind, with the same question to ask.
8 Can You Take the TONI-4 Online, for Free, or as a PDF?
No: the TONI-4 is a print kit given to one person at a time by a qualified examiner, and none of the product pages we opened lists an online edition, a free version or a downloadable test. PAR's page names the administration format as print, Pearson's page lists the complete kit as a print product, and PRO-ED's page lists an examiner's manual, a picture book and printed answer booklets and record forms (all opened October 29, 2026). That answers two of the most common searches directly. A search for the TONI-4 test online for free, or for a TONI-4 test PDF, does not lead to the instrument, because the instrument is a controlled set of printed materials and a trained person who gives it.
Three kinds of material can sit behind those searches, and they need separating. The first is publisher and distributor pages, which describe the test and sell the kit to qualified buyers. The second is look-alike quizzes, meaning free abstract puzzle sets that borrow the name or the idea. Their scores are not TONI-4 scores, because a score only means something against the normative sample of the test that produced it, and a quiz with no stated norm group has none. The third is copied record forms, item sheets or practice sets. Even setting copyright aside, a person who has seen items beforehand may no longer give the kind of performance the norms describe, which is the security concern that Standard 6.7 names. A score from any of those, converted to an IQ with a lookup table from the internet, is not a TONI-4 result and should not be presented as one.
There are honest free and cheap routes, and they answer different questions. If the question is what a nonverbal reasoning task feels like, a free IQ test or the free trial of a normed battery is a fair first step, with the limit that a free quiz does not tell you how you compare with adults. If the question is whether an online score can be trusted, the page on the best online IQ tests compares real options against stated criteria, and the page on IQ tests for adults explains what to look for in one. If the question is where to take a supervised test, the page on every way to take an IQ test lists the routes, from a clinic to an online battery.
A practical note for readers who want a TONI-4 because a school, employer or agency asked for a nonverbal assessment. The person or office that made the request is the right one to ask which instrument and which professional they will accept. The TONI-4 is one of several nonverbal tests, and that office may name another. An online test does not replace a requested evaluation, and no page of ours claims it does.
9 Which Real Options Give an Adult a Nonverbal Estimate?
An adult has three real routes to a reasoning estimate with little or no language: an examiner giving a restricted nonverbal test such as the TONI-4, a psychologist giving a multi-index battery, or a normed online battery, and the routes differ in who supervises, what they report and what they cost. The table sets them side by side. The TONI-4 facts come from the publisher and distributor pages opened on October 29, 2026, and the ACIS facts are the published forms, with prices read the same day and subject to change.
Option
What it measures
Normed against whom
Supervised
Time
Cost, read October 29, 2026
What you receive
Qualified examiner giving the TONI-4
Nonverbal abstract reasoning, one overall score
Normative sample of 2,272 people, ages 6 to 89
Yes, one person at a time
15 to 20 minutes per PRO-ED
No fee for being tested is published on the pages we read; the kit is listed at 477 dollars
Standard score, percentile rank and stanine
Psychologist giving a multi-index battery
Several broad abilities, with a Full Scale IQ
Published adult norms of that battery
Yes
Varies by battery and clinic
Varies by clinic; see the page on official routes
A written report with index scores
Free online matrix style quiz
Usually one puzzle score
Often no stated reference group
No
Varies
Free
Whatever the page prints; not a TONI-4 equivalent
ACIS Quick
6 subtests in 3 domains, including Matrix Reasoning
Adult norms covering ages 16 to 90
No
About 45 minutes
15 dollars one time
Full Scale IQ with its 95 percent confidence interval
ACIS Optimized
13 subtests in 5 domains, including Matrix Reasoning and Layer Rotation
Adult norms covering ages 16 to 90
No
About 110 minutes
30 dollars one time
Full Scale IQ with its interval
ACIS Full Scale
All 20 subtests in 6 domains
Adult norms covering ages 16 to 90
No
About 175 minutes
50 dollars one time
Six indices, Full Scale IQ and 20 scaled scores
ACIS Custom Test
Any subtests the buyer picks
Adult norms covering ages 16 to 90
No
Depends on the picks
5 dollars per subtest
The full index of any domain completed and a scaled score for every subtest
Read the table with one correction in mind: no ACIS form is language free. Quick includes two verbal subtests, Similarities and Vocabulary, and the audio subtests Digit Span and Alphanumeric Sequencing, and every ACIS instruction is in English. What the forms offer is a nonverbal reasoning component inside a wider profile, which is a different thing from a test designed end to end to avoid language. The ACIS technical manual lists a composite, abbreviated NVI, that "emphasizes nonverbal reasoning, visual spatial ability, working memory, and speed with minimal reliance on verbal content," available when its subtests are available; the technical manual documents how it is defined, and this page quotes no statistic from it.
Two other pages help with the choice among nonverbal tests as a class. The page on nonverbal IQ tests covers nonverbal batteries and what they leave out, and the page on Raven's 2 covers the best known matrix test among the professional options. The pages we read do not state the highest standard score the TONI-4 can report, so a reader who is aiming at the top of the scale should ask that question before choosing.
10 What Can a Nonverbal Estimate Tell an Adult, and What Can It Not?
A nonverbal reasoning estimate can show how a person handles unfamiliar figural problems against people of the same age, and it cannot show knowledge, quantitative skill, memory, speed or any diagnosis, so it works as one input and never as a verdict. The strength of the format is the reason it exists: when language is a barrier, a task that does not need words lets reasoning show. PRO-ED's own wording says the test is ideal for people who have language, hearing or motor impairments, or are not familiar with mainstream American culture. That is a statement about the intended use, and it is the publisher's.
The limits follow from the single task type. One test, one score, one slice of the CHC model: the verbal comprehension, quantitative reasoning, working memory and processing speed that a battery reports as separate indices are not part of the TONI-4's result, so nothing in a TONI-4 score says whether a person's vocabulary, arithmetic, memory or speed is high or low. The page on index score differences explains why even a full battery should be read with care: large gaps between indices are common in ordinary people, so a pattern is a reason to look, not a finding. For the same reason, a single nonverbal score that sits above or below a verbal one is not a defect in either. The sibling page on the Perceptual Reasoning Index covers a Wechsler family composite, which is a different construct from a single nonverbal reasoning test.
Group statistics are never individual diagnoses. The research above shows the TONI-4 used with groups such as adults with schizophrenia, adolescents in an iron study and children with neurological gait disorders. Those papers describe how the test behaved in those groups and say nothing about whether a given reader belongs to one, and a TONI-4 score by itself cannot diagnose an intellectual disability, a learning disability or an attention condition. Readers who ask the question for a particular reason have pages that treat it in context. The page on IQ tests for non-native English speakers covers what moves a score when English is not the first language, the page on dyslexia friendly IQ testing covers where reading load hides in a test, and the page on IQ tests for autistic adults covers what one score misses.
The last limit is the ability itself. The page on cognitive ability testing across several domains describes what a multi-domain profile adds to a single reasoning score, and, as noted above, a reasoning task of this kind shares only part of its variance with general intelligence. A reader who wants to know whether a nonverbal result is a good summary of their ability as a whole should look at several tasks across domains before concluding.
11 What Conditions Does Each Kind of Session Need?
A TONI-4 session is controlled by an examiner who can see the person and the figures, while an online session has to be controlled by the person taking it, so the conditions that an examiner supplies have to be supplied by the test taker. In the TONI-4, the examiner gives the directions orally or by pantomime, the examinee indicates answers by gesture, and the examiner can see whether the instructions were understood. The examiner also holds the printed materials, so the person is never alone with the items. The APA Guidelines say in Guideline 8 that psychologists strive to follow standardized administration procedures to support valid interpretation of norms, which is the idea behind a controlled session.
An online session has no examiner, so the conditions are the reader's to set. ACIS says breaks are allowed, progress is saved between subtests, and there are 30 days to finish, so a reader can split a long form across days. The Matrix Reasoning page says no external aids are allowed, including calculators, notes, scratch paper and drawing tools, and that the subtest allows 30 seconds per item. Digit Span, Alphanumeric Sequencing and Arithmetic present their items as audio and need working sound. A quiet room, a full battery charge or a plugged in device, and a screen on which the figures are not cropped are the other basics. The Layer Rotation page notes that the instruction is carried by a mark on the layer rather than by a sentence.
The conditions that cannot be supplied online are the examiner's observation and the check on who is taking the test. The ACIS technical manual documents the procedure, and the unsupervised format is one of the plain limits stated at the end of this page. A reader who needs a controlled session for a formal purpose should use a supervised route, and a reader who wants a private, low stakes look at their profile can use the online one with the conditions above.
ACIS is an online, unsupervised, English only battery with adult norms, it is not a TONI-4 and not a clinical instrument, and a buyer should use it as a normed look at where they stand across several abilities, not as documentation of a language barrier or as a diagnosis. The limits come first. ACIS is not a clinical or diagnostic instrument. It is not for hiring, for school accommodations or for admission to high IQ societies. It cannot tell a reader whether they have a learning disability, an attention condition or an intellectual disability, and neither can a TONI-4 score on its own. It is in English only, its instructions are in English, and its manual says that verbal and knowledge tasks are affected by English proficiency and educational exposure, so a reader whose first language is not English should read the verbal results with that in mind. Nothing in ACIS replaces the TONI-4's central design, which is directions by pantomime and in eight languages, answers by gesture and an examiner in the room.
What ACIS does offer is different. It reports a Full Scale IQ with its 95 percent confidence interval on the standard scale (mean 100, standard deviation 15), scaled subtest scores from 1 to 19 and, in the Full Scale form, six index scores, on adult norms covering ages 16 to 90. A reader whose question is about reasoning with figures can start from the Matrix Reasoning subtest in Quick or from Matrix Reasoning and Layer Rotation in Optimized, then read how those scaled scores sit beside the verbal, memory and speed scores a battery adds. The Custom Test, at 5 dollars per subtest, lets a buyer pick the subtests and returns the full index of any domain completed, though the Full Scale IQ needs the Full Scale battery. Prices were read on October 29, 2026 and can change, so check the ACIS home page before paying. The refund wording is exact: "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."
The professional frame comes from two documents. The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (AERA, APA and NCME, 2014) say in Standard 3.13 that a test should be administered in the language that is most relevant and appropriate to the test purpose, and in Standard 9.4 that a user who applies a test to a purpose with little validity evidence is responsible for documenting the rationale and obtaining evidence. The APA Guidelines for Psychological Assessment and Evaluation (2020) ask in Guideline 6 that psychologists select tools with sufficient validity evidence for their uses and sufficient score reliability, and measures that are fair and appropriate for the purpose, population, setting and context. Read together, they give a buyer a simple test of any instrument, including this one: does the instrument fit the language and the purpose, and does evidence support using it that way.
A concrete next step depends on the reason for looking.
You need a formal assessment, for a school, an employer, an agency or a clinician. Ask that body which instrument and which professional it accepts, and ask a licensed psychologist or other qualified examiner about a nonverbal test such as the TONI-4, the CTONI-2 or another. Ask which edition and norms they use.
You want a private look at your profile. Start the free trial, which needs no card, open an example report to see what a result contains, and choose Quick, Optimized or Full Scale by the domains you want to see.
You want to know what a nonverbal task is like. Read the Matrix Reasoning and Layer Rotation pages, which describe the formats and never the items, and the page on nonverbal IQ tests.
Every third party fact and figure on this page comes from the documents below, opened or verified on October 29, 2026, and any figure we calculated ourselves is labeled in the text as our arithmetic. Where we read only an abstract, the entry says so. Prices and policies on commercial pages change, so check the page before you pay.
PRO-ED. TONI-4: Test of Nonverbal Intelligence, Fourth Edition, Complete Kit (product page). Ages, forms, items, administration time, directions, normative sample, test level, kit contents and price. Read October 29, 2026. https://proedinc.com/products-13410.html
American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association and National Council on Measurement in Education (2014). Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. American Educational Research Association. Standards 3.2, 3.13, 5.9, 6.7 and 9.4 and their comments. Open access edition read October 29, 2026. https://www.testingstandards.net/open-access-files.html
American Psychological Association (2020). APA Guidelines for Psychological Assessment and Evaluation. Approved by the APA Council of Representatives, March 2020. Guidelines 6 and 8. Read from a local copy of the PDF on October 29, 2026, because the apa.org address refused our automated request. https://www.apa.org/about/policy/guidelines-psychological-assessment-evaluation.pdf
Chen, K.-W., Lee, Y.-C., Yu, T.-Y., Cheng, L.-J., Chao, C.-Y. and Hsieh, C.-L. (2021). Test-retest reliability and convergent validity of the test of nonverbal intelligence-fourth edition in patients with schizophrenia. BMC Psychiatry, 21(1), 39. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-021-03041-4
Trahan, L. H., Stuebing, K. K., Fletcher, J. M. and Hiscock, M. (2014). The Flynn effect: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 140(5), 1332 to 1360. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037173
Yeboah, F. A., Bioh, J., Amoani, B., Effah, A., Senu, E., Mensah, O. S. O., Agyei, A., Kwarteng, S. and colleagues (2024). Iron deficiency anemia and its association with cognitive function among adolescents in the Ashanti Region, Ghana. BMC Public Health, 24(1), 3209. Abstract read. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-20640-4
Labruyère, R., Gerber, C. N., Birrer-Brütsch, K., Meyer-Heim, A. and van Hedel, H. J. A. (2013). Requirements for and impact of a serious game for neuro-pediatric robot-assisted gait training. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 34(11), 3906 to 3915. Abstract read. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2013.07.031
Klein, M.-N., Jufer-Riedi, U., Rieder, S., Hochstrasser, C., Steiner, M., Cao, L. M., Feinstein, A., Bigi, S. and Lidzba, K. (2021). Computerized Symbol Digit Modalities Test in a Swiss pediatric cohort, Part 2: Clinical implementation. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 631535. Abstract read. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.631535
14 Frequently Asked Questions
What is the TONI-4 test?
The TONI-4 is the Test of Nonverbal Intelligence, Fourth Edition, a language-free reasoning test published by PRO-ED. It uses abstract figures, needs no reading, speaking or writing from the test taker, and is given individually by a trained examiner who then reports age-based scores that compare one person with others the same age.
What does TONI-4 stand for?
TONI-4 stands for Test of Nonverbal Intelligence, Fourth Edition. The number marks the fourth edition of the test. The authors listed on the kit are Linda Brown, Rita J. Sherbenou and Susan K. Johnsen, and the kit carries a 2010 copyright date.
Can I take the TONI-4 test online for free?
No official online or free version appears on the publisher and distributor pages. The TONI-4 is a print kit that a qualified examiner gives in person, and free puzzle quizzes that borrow its name have no connection to its norms. A score from such a quiz cannot be converted into a TONI-4 result.
Is there a TONI-4 test PDF?
The test itself is not offered as a PDF. The materials are a printed picture book, an examiner's manual and record forms sold to qualified buyers, and copies of items circulating online are unauthorized and undermine the norms. Publisher pages and research papers describe the test but are not the test.
What is the TONI-4 age range?
PRO-ED lists the TONI-4 for ages 6 years 0 months through 89 years 11 months, so it spans school age, adulthood and later adulthood. Pearson, PAR and Hogrefe give the same range. A person outside it, such as a 5 year old or a 90 year old, would need a different instrument.
How long does the TONI-4 take?
PRO-ED, Pearson and Hogrefe list the administration time as 15 to 20 minutes, and PAR says one form takes about 15 minutes. That covers giving one of the two forms. The visit to a psychologist or clinic may take longer, because it may include introductions, other tests, scoring and feedback.
Who can give the TONI-4 test?
Only a trained examiner who meets the publisher's qualification for a Level B test, through one of the degree, certification, healthcare license or supervised training routes that PRO-ED lists. Hogrefe's UK page lists Level 2 and asks buyers for evidence of eligibility, such as a degree or an application form.
How many items and forms does the TONI-4 have?
The TONI-4 has two equivalent forms, Form A and Form B, and each form has 60 items. All the items are abstract and figural, arranged from easy to difficult. Two forms make it possible to retest the same person later without repeating the same item set.
How does a person answer TONI-4 items?
By gesture. PRO-ED says test takers respond with simple but meaningful gestures such as pointing, nodding or blinking, so no speaking, reading or writing is required. The examiner gives the directions orally or by pantomime, and the publisher supplies translations of the directions in seven languages besides English.
What scores does the TONI-4 give?
Pearson lists age-based standard scores with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, percentile ranks and stanines. A standard score shows how far a person is from the average of their age group, and the percentile converts that distance into a rank among 100 people of the same age.
Who wrote the TONI-4 and when was it published?
Linda Brown, Rita J. Sherbenou and Susan K. Johnsen are the listed authors, and PRO-ED publishes the kit with a 2010 copyright. The Buros Center lists the product with a 1982 to 2010 date range, and PRO-ED includes critical reviews and research findings covering 1982 to 2009 in the kit.
How big was the TONI-4 normative sample?
PRO-ED reports 2,272 people living in 33 states, with the sample stratified by region, gender, race and ethnicity, parental education and family socioeconomic status. The pages we read do not say how many of those were adults, so the support for adult age bands is not visible from the publisher pages alone.
How much does the TONI-4 cost?
The complete kit is listed at 477 dollars by PRO-ED, PAR and Pearson, and at 469 pounds excluding VAT by Hogrefe UK, as read on October 29, 2026. That is what a clinic or school pays. An adult pays whatever fee the examiner charges, which the publishers do not publish.
Is the TONI-4 reliable for adults?
One 2021 study tested 103 adults with schizophrenia twice, four weeks apart, and found an intra-class correlation of 0.73 with a trivial practice effect. That is one clinical sample, not the general adult population. Adults who rely on a score should ask the examiner for the manual's reliability evidence for their age band.
Is the TONI-4 a full IQ test?
Not in the sense of a multi-index battery. It reports one score from one task type, abstract figural reasoning, and does not report verbal, quantitative, memory or speed abilities. Its standard scores sit on the IQ scale, but a battery gives a broader picture, so treat it as a focused estimate.
Is a nonverbal test culture free?
No test is culture free. Figural items avoid words and school knowledge, but familiarity with abstract figures, test taking and timed or untimed tasks can still differ across people. Nonverbal tests reduce language demands and are better described as culture reduced, a point that careful readers should keep in mind when interpreting a score.
Does the TONI-4 suit adults whose first language is not English?
The language demands are low, because the items have no words, answers are gestures, and directions are available in eight languages. That is the reason PRO-ED recommends it for people who are not familiar with mainstream American culture. Low language demand does not remove all cultural influence, so ask the examiner how they handle it.
Are the TONI-4 norms outdated?
The norms come from a test published in 2010, which is 16 years before this page. Research on rising scores suggests older norms can inflate results, though the size for this test is unknown. The Standards put the responsibility on test users to avoid outdated norms, so ask the examiner which norms they used.
What can an adult take online instead of the TONI-4?
A normed online battery is the closest option, with the limit that it is unsupervised and in English. ACIS offers Quick at 15 dollars, Optimized at 30 dollars and Full Scale at 50 dollars, with a free trial and no card. None of them is a TONI-4, and none is language free.
Can an online test replace the TONI-4 for documentation?
No. If a school, employer or agency asks for a specific assessment, an online battery will not substitute for an examiner's report. ACIS is not designed for school accommodations, diagnosis or hiring, so an adult who needs documentation should ask a qualified psychologist which instrument the requesting body accepts.
How should I read a nonverbal reasoning score?
Read it as a band around an estimate of figural reasoning compared with people of the same age, not as a fixed number or a verdict on intelligence. Check the norms' date, ask for the interval, and compare it with other evidence about the person, such as work, school and daily life.
Take the assessment
You get a profile, not a number
ACIS measures six CHC domains across 20 subtests and reports each one with its own normed score and confidence interval, so you can see where you are strong and where you are not.
