Kohs Block-Design Test (1923)

THE PROCEDURE

Copy the top faces of a printed card with painted cubes.

Show the card

The examiner lays out a printed design — the pattern of the top faces only.

Demonstrate

The test was meant to be easy to give to people with language or hearing difficulties.

Build it

The subject turns and arranges the painted cubes until their top faces reproduce the card.

Time and moves

Kohs scored accuracy, completion time and the number of moves, each move being one block placed. Hutt's 1932 revision put the weight on time.

COPY THE CARD

Four cards, 2×2 to 4×4

Pick a face, then click a square to place it. Click a split face again to turn it. Kohs recorded both time and number of moves — so do we.

THE PRINTED CARD

Designs drawn for this page, in the Kohs style — not the original 17 cards.

CARD 1 · 4 blocks0 moves · 0s

Choose a face above, then click a square.

Coloured cubes before and after Kohs

Kohs didn't invent testing with blocks. He turned it into a graded, scored scale, and Wechsler took it from there. Select a step.

BeforeMaxfield's colour cubesHutt, writing in 1925, identified Francis N. Maxfield's "color cube" test at the University of Pennsylvania clinic as the first documented use of block construction as a psychological test. Clara Town also used his procedures.[3]

What counted, test by test

The same task, scored three ways. The demo above counts moves and seconds because Kohs did.

COUNTS TOWARD THE SCORE

KOHS, 1920–23[4]HUTT, 1932[5]WECHSLER BLOCK DESIGN[3]

Accuracy of the copy

YesYesAll-or-none

Time to complete

YesYes, the only measureWithin a limit, plus bonus

Number of moves

YesDroppedNo

A "move" in Kohs's scoring is the placement of one block [4]. Wechsler's modern scoring is all-or-none per design, with bonus points for speed [3].

References

[1]Kohs, S. C. (1923). Intelligence measurement: a psychological and statistical study based upon the block-design tests. New York: Macmillan. xii + 312 pp. National Library of Medicine, Digital Collections.collections.nlm.nih.gov

[2]Kohs block design test. Wikipedia (citing Kohs 1923 and Hutt 1932).en.wikipedia.org

[3]Block Design. Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology. Springer.link.springer.com

[4]Looking ahead: advancing measurement and analysis of the Block Design Test using technology and artificial intelligence (2024). Journal of Intelligence 12(6): 53. PMC.pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

[5]Block design test. Wikipedia (citing Hutt, M. L. (1932), The Kohs block-designs test: a revision for clinical practice, Journal of Applied Psychology 16(3): 298–307).en.wikipedia.org

HOW TO CITE THIS PAGE

What's Your IQ. (2026). Kohs Block-Design Test (1920–1923). In Historical IQ Tests Archive. Retrieved October 1, 2026, from /en/historical-iq-tests/kohs-block-design-1923

EDITORIAL RECORD

First published2026

Last reviewed1 October 2026

Sources5: catalogue records for the 1923 book, two reference works and a 2024 review of block-design testing

CorrectionsDated the test to 1920 (the 1923 book is the full study). Removed: "adopted essentially unchanged" into Wechsler (scoring changed); a lineage list through WAIS-IV and WISC-V that no source here covers; "worked in Portland schools and later at Vineland", which we could not confirm; an Internet Archive link we could not verify.

Open questionsThe colours of Kohs's cube faces (the demo's red, white, blue and yellow are a sketch); the 17 original designs; his validation against the Binet

Related historical tests

Where it went1939

Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Scale

Wechsler adapted his Block Design subtest from Kohs. He followed Hutt in scoring speed as well as accuracy.

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Cubes, used differently1914

Knox Cube Imitation Test

Knox also put wooden cubes in front of people who might not share the examiner's language. His were tapped in sequences to imitate, not arranged into patterns.

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The performance tradition1917

Pintner-Paterson Scale of Performance Tests

Form boards and other hands-on tasks for deaf and non-English-speaking children set the template Kohs was working in. Like his blocks, they needed no spoken answers.

ReferenceRead more →

A cube task in camp1918

Army Individual Examination

The Army Performance Scale included a cube-construction test. It shows that building with blocks was already part of wartime individual examining.

InteractiveTake it →

Kohs's teacher1916

Stanford-Binet

Kohs was a student of Terman, the Stanford-Binet's author. He developed the block designs at Stanford in 1920.

InteractiveTake it →

Another performance task1914

Healy Pictorial Completion Test

Healy's picture board is another hands-on test from before 1920. Picture completion also ended up in Wechsler's performance scale.

InteractiveTake it →

Part of the Historical IQ Tests Archive. Editorial content under CC BY-SA 4.0. Kohs's 1923 book is in the National Library of Medicine's digital collections. The cards in the demo are ours, not his.

BibTeX RIS

Kohs Block-Design: intelligence you build with your hands.

Copy the top faces of a printed card with painted cubes.

Four cards, 2×2 to 4×4

Coloured cubes before and after Kohs

What counted, test by test

References

Related historical tests

Blocks are one piece. See the whole picture.