More misgivings about the Matching Familiar Figures Test as a measure of reflection-impulsivity: Absence of construct validity in preadolescence.

The Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFFT) continues to enjoy considerable research popularity as a measure of or reflection-impulsivity despite continuing doubts about its construct validity. As part of an ongoing longitudinal study, MFFT performance was assessed at age 11 and related to California Child Q-sort evaluations obtained both concurrently and at age 14. Using hierarchical multiple regression, we compared the relative influence of MFFT latency and error scores in the personality domain. MFFT latency, by itself, accounted for almost no incremental variance in personality evaluations after error had been partialed out. However, the contribution of MFFT error was appreciable and unique—it was significantly related in many ways to behavior, even after its shared variance with latency had been partialed out. Only for girls were significant MFFT latency-by-error interaction effects observed. The results, consistent with those obtained for the same sample of children when assessed seven years earlier and consistent also with the results of many other investigators, are incompatible with the original interpretation of the MFFT. The results are also incompatible with the subsequent Kagan and Messer conjecture that developmental changes occur in the meaning of MFFT performance. Evidence is offered for a competence interpretation rather than a conceptual tempo interpretation of the MFFT. The propriety, at this stage of accumulated knowledge, of continuing to use the MFFT as an index of reflection-impulsivity is strongly questioned.