ABSTRACT
John Carlyle Raven was born in Islington, London in 1902 to John Raven, an umbrella maker, and Jane Elizabeth Martin. John struggled both with the cumbersome nature of the test and the testing constraints which included noise, time pressure and the management of parents who were always keen to assist their child. To compensate for his struggles with the written word, John also had a strong preference for diagrams over words, peppering his publications with figures that have continued to fascinate students of dyslexia for decades. Mary Elizabeth was also a key supporter of John, helping him improve the quality of his writing, which was challenged by his dyslexia. John Carlyle Raven produced the first experimental version of his Raven’s Progressive Matrices test in 1936, publishing in 1938. Whilst working with the sick and injured John Carlyle also began to collect additional test data that would enable him to predict success on army training courses.
