The Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test (ROCF) is a neuropsychological assessment

Neuropsychological assessment

Neuropsychological assessment was traditionally carried out to assess the extent of impairment to a particular skill and to attempt to locate an area of the brain which may have been damaged after brain injury or neurological illness...

 in which examinees are asked to reproduce a complicated line drawing, first by copying and then from memory. Many different cognitive abilities are needed for a correct performance, and the test therefore permits the evaluation of different functions, such as visuospatial abilities

Spatial-temporal reasoning

Spatial–temporal reasoning is used in both the fields of psychology and computer science.-Spatial–temporal reasoning in psychology:Spatial-temporal reasoning is the ability to visualize spatial patterns and mentally manipulate them over a time-ordered sequence of spatial transformations.This...

, memory

Memory

In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....

, attention

Attention

Attention is the cognitive process of paying attention to one aspect of the environment while ignoring others. Attention is one of the most intensely studied topics within psychology and cognitive neuroscience....

, planning

Planning

Planning in organizations and public policy is both the organizational process of creating and maintaining a plan; and the psychological process of thinking about the activities required to create a desired goal on some scale. As such, it is a fundamental property of intelligent behavior...

, and working memory

Working memory

Working memory has been defined as the system which actively holds information in the mind to do verbal and nonverbal tasks such as reasoning and comprehension, and to make it available for further information processing...

 (executive functions

Executive functions

The executive system is a theorized cognitive system in psychology that controls and manages other cognitive processes. It is responsible for processes that are sometimes referred to as the executive function, executive functions, supervisory attentional system, or cognitive control...

). First proposed by Swiss

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 psychologist André Rey

André Rey (psychologist)

André Rey is the name of a Swiss psychologist who first developed the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure and the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test. Both tests are widely used in neuropsychological assessment....

 in 1941 and further standardized by Paul-Alexandre Osterrieth in 1944, it is frequently used to further elucidate any secondary effect of brain injury

Acquired brain injury

An acquired brain injury is brain damage caused by events after birth, rather than as part of a genetic or congenital disorder such as fetal alcohol syndrome, perinatal illness or perinatal hypoxia. ABI can result in cognitive, physical, emotional, or behavioural impairments that lead to permanent...

 in neurological

Neurology

Neurology is a medical specialty dealing with disorders of the nervous system. Specifically, it deals with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of disease involving the central, peripheral, and autonomic nervous systems, including their coverings, blood vessels, and all effector tissue,...

 patients, to test for the presence of dementia

Dementia

Dementia is a serious loss of cognitive ability in a previously unimpaired person, beyond what might be expected from normal aging...

, or to study the degree of cognitive development in children

Child development

Child development stages describe theoretical milestones of child development. Many stage models of development have been proposed, used as working concepts and in some cases asserted as nativist theories....

.

Conditions

Three conditions are most commonly used in the ROCF. In the Copy condition, the examinee is given a piece of paper and a pencil, and the stimulus figure is placed in front of them. They reproduce the figure to the best of their ability. The test is not timed, but the length of time needed to copy the figure is observed. Some administrators use a series of colored pencils, in order to preserve a record of the order in which design elements were reproduced. However, because of concerns that the use of color changes the nature of the test and makes it easier for the subject to remember the figure, the current test manual suggests that this not be done, but that the evaluator take notes on the process the examinee uses. Once the copy is complete, the stimulus figure and the examinee's copy are removed from view. In the Immediate Recall condition, after a short delay, the examinee is asked to reproduce the figure from memory. After a longer delay (20–30 minutes), the examinee may again be asked to draw the figure from memory. Examinees are not told beforehand that they will be asked to draw the figure from memory; the Immediate and Delayed Recall conditions are therefore tests of incidental or implicit memory

Implicit memory

Implicit memory is a type of memory in which previous experiences aid in the performance of a task without conscious awareness of these previous experiences. Evidence for implicit memory arises in priming, a process whereby subjects show improved performance on tasks for which they have been...

. Each copy is scored for the accurate reproduction and placement of 18 specific design elements. Additionally, qualitative observations regarding the examinee's approach to the task and the effectiveness of any apparent strategy use can be noted.

André Rey

At the dawning of the 1940s, psychologists throughout the world were having difficulty in eliciting the specific deficits exhibited by individuals (both adults and children) who had experienced traumatic brain injury. In 1941, the Swiss psychologist André Rey was working at the Université de Genève in Geneva, and he recognized this necessity of differentiating between "primary effects, which are a direct result of the insult to the head, and the secondary effects, which develop out of subjective reactions determined by the loss of awareness from the physical impairment

Physical disability

A physical disability is any impairment which limits the physical function of one or more limbs or fine or gross motor ability. Other physical disabilities include impairments which limit other facets of daily living, such as respiratory disorders and epilepsy....

s". One of the many forms of assessment that Rey detailed in his 1941 report was a complex figure composed of many different shapes, line segments, and other elements.

Paul-Alexandre Osterrieth

In 1944, Paul-Alexandre Osterrieth, who had worked as a research assistant under André Rey at the Université de Genève, utilized the figure Rey had developed in his work with young children. Osterrieth proposed to subcategorize the figure into 18 elements and score them based on their presence, completeness, and correct placement. This 18-point scoring system is still commonly used today in evaluating an examinee's performance on the ROCF test.

Unlike Rey, Osterrieth was primarily interested in the measure as an assessment of whether or not children had developed the concept of a holistic or gestalt

Gestalt psychology

Gestalt psychology or gestaltism is a theory of mind and brain of the Berlin School; the operational principle of gestalt psychology is that the brain is holistic, parallel, and analog, with self-organizing tendencies...

 principle by various ages, as manifested by the way they approached the figure drawing. Based on his experimentation, Osterrieth recognized several important trends. Specifically, he noticed that the principle of gestalt seems to stabilize around the age of nine years in children. Also, he noted several different approaches that the children used in constructing the figure, each of which appears to be roughly correlated with a particular age group:

• Primitive forms that show "distorted integration" and "confabulations" in their drawings.
• Children who showed an awareness of specific concepts while still remaining unaware of the overall figure.
• Complete awareness of the overall figure.

Additionally, Osterrieth noticed that strategy was a good predictor of the child's performance on all three of the various tasks.

Edith Taylor

In 1959, child Psychologist Edith Taylor gave more elaborate descriptions on the 18-point scoring system initially proposed by Osterrieth. She had also briefly worked with Rey in Geneva and credited him with inspiring her to pursue this particular aspect of psychology.

Laughlin B. Taylor

In 1969, Laughlin B. Taylor developed a second complex figure that is comparable to Rey's and can be therefore used to eliminate the memory effect in a second evaluation.
Explicit scoring criteria based on the Taylor-Osterrieth method have been developed for both the Rey-Osterrieth and Taylor Complex Figure Tests, although the Taylor figure has been found to be more easily remembered than the Rey-Osterrieth, calling into question their interchangeability.