The Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test asks you to copy a complex geometric design and later redraw it from memory, measuring visual memory and planning. (153 chars)
Dr. Russell T. WarneChief Scientist
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The Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test (ROCF) is a neuropsychological test in which a person copies a complicated geometric figure and then redraws it from memory, first within minutes and again after about half an hour. Because the figure is too complex to memorize casually, the test gives clinicians a window into "visuospatial construction" (the ability to assemble visual parts into an organized whole), visual memory, and the planning skills a person uses to organize a demanding task. This article explains where the test came from, how its three trials and 36-point scoring system work, who takes it, and what it can and cannot tell you.
What the ROCF is and where it came from
The figure at the heart of the test was created by the Swiss neuropsychologist André Rey, who published it in 1941 as a tool for assessing visuoconstructional skills and memory in adults with brain damage. A few years later, in 1944, Paul-Alexandre Osterrieth standardized the administration and scoring procedure, which is why the test carries both names. According to a testing protocol published in Nature Protocols by researchers at Seoul National University, the ROCF remains one of the most widely used neuropsychological tests for evaluating visuospatial constructional ability and visual memory, and it has also become a useful measure of "executive function," the set of planning and self-organization abilities associated with the prefrontal lobes.
The figure itself is an abstract line drawing built around a large rectangle, with diagonals, crosses, circles, dots, and attached shapes arranged inside and around it. It resembles nothing familiar, which is deliberate. Because the design has no obvious name or meaning, it is hard to encode verbally, so reproducing it leans heavily on visual and spatial processing rather than on verbal memory.
The ROCF is rarely given on its own. It usually appears inside a larger battery of measures. Our overview of what neuropsychological testing involves explains how clinicians combine tests like this one into a full cognitive profile.
The three trials: copy, immediate recall, and delayed recall
The standard administration has three drawing trials, and the contrast among them is where most of the diagnostic value lives.
• Copy trial: The examinee is shown the figure and asked to draw it as accurately as possible while looking at it. Memory is not involved yet. This trial measures perception, visuospatial construction, and the organizational strategy the person brings to a complex task.
• Immediate recall: The figure is removed and the person is asked to draw it again from memory. In the widely used Rey Complex Figure Test and Recognition Trial published by PAR, this trial comes about three minutes after the copy. It captures how much of the figure was encoded into memory in the first place.
• Delayed recall: After a delay of about 30 minutes filled with other tasks, the person draws the figure from memory one more time. This trial tests whether the visual information was retained over time, not just registered briefly.
The publisher PAR reports that its version, authored by John E. Meyers and Kelly R. Meyers, also adds a recognition trial, takes about 45 minutes including the delay interval, and is normed for ages 6 to 89. Comparing the trials matters because the pattern is informative. A person who copies the figure well but recalls little may have a memory encoding or retrieval problem. A person whose copy is already distorted may have a constructional or perceptual problem that limits everything downstream. For a broader look at how recall tasks like this fit into memory assessment, see our guide to how memory tests actually measure memory.
How the 36-point scoring system works
The classic scoring method divides the figure into 18 scoring units, such as the large rectangle, each diagonal, and the various attached details. Each unit is scored from 0 to 2 based on whether it is drawn accurately and placed correctly, which yields a maximum of 36 points. A study in Scientific Reports describes this 36-point accuracy method as the most widely used in clinical practice, and the same criteria are applied to all three drawing trials, which makes the copy and recall scores directly comparable.
Raw scores are then compared with norms for the person's age, since performance changes across the lifespan. The same Scientific Reports study notes that scores on the 36-point method correlate strongly with other visuospatial measures, including the Visual Reproduction subtest of the Wechsler Memory Scale and Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices, which supports the interpretation of the ROCF as a genuinely visuospatial task. PAR reports interrater reliability between .93 and .99 for trained scorers of its version, along with test-retest reliability from .76 to .89.
What copy organization reveals about executive strategy
Two people can earn similar accuracy scores while producing their drawings in very different ways, and clinicians pay close attention to the difference. A well-organized approach starts with the big structural elements, typically the central rectangle and its diagonals, and then hangs the details on that frame. A piecemeal approach copies the figure fragment by fragment, line by line, without ever establishing the overall structure.
Qualitative scoring systems were built to capture exactly this. The Boston Qualitative Scoring System rates features such as planning, fragmentation, configural accuracy, and neatness rather than accuracy alone. In a study published in The Clinical Neuropsychologist, Schreiber and colleagues compared adults with ADHD to matched controls and found that the ADHD group showed measurable impairment in configural accuracy, planning, and neatness even though the two groups did not differ significantly on the traditional 36-point score. The authors concluded that the qualitative measures detected persisting executive dysfunction that the accuracy score alone missed. In other words, how you draw the figure can matter as much as what you draw.
Who takes the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test?
The ROCF appears in evaluations across a wide range of ages and referral questions.
• Traumatic brain injury: PAR reports that the Rey Complex Figure Test discriminates mildly brain-injured patients from healthy comparison groups, and it can help clarify whether a memory complaint reflects a problem with encoding, storage, or retrieval.
• Dementia and cognitive aging: The test is used across the spectrum from normal aging through "mild cognitive impairment" (a decline larger than expected for age that does not yet meet criteria for dementia) to dementia. A 2025 study in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease established reference values for adults aged 50 to 90 precisely because the test is so commonly used in aging populations.
• Epilepsy: In surgical epilepsy programs, the ROCF helps characterize visuospatial memory. A study of patients who had undergone temporal lobe surgery, published in The Clinical Neuropsychologist, found that patients with right-sided anterior temporal lobectomies performed worse on delayed recall than those with left-sided surgeries.
• ADHD evaluations: As described above, qualitative scoring of the copy trial can reveal planning and organization difficulties in both children and adults referred for attention concerns.
Like the clock drawing test, the ROCF turns a drawing into a structured sample of cognition, but it is considerably more demanding and more finely scored, so it is used for detailed assessment rather than quick screening.
Known limitations of the ROCF
The test has real strengths, and it also has boundaries that a careful reader should know.
• Scoring is labor-intensive and partly subjective: A 2026 rapid review in Frontiers in Psychiatry notes that manual scoring takes meaningful rater time and that interrater reliability remains problematic in practice, which is one reason researchers are exploring automated scoring.
• Demographics shape scores: The Journal of Alzheimer's Disease study found that education, age, and gender all affected performance in non-demented adults, with education explaining the most variance on the copy trial and age the most on recall. A score interpreted against the wrong norms can mislead.
• A low score has many possible causes: Motor problems, poor vision, low effort, anxiety, and unfamiliarity with drawing tasks can all depress a score without any memory disorder present. No single test result is diagnostic on its own, which is why the ROCF lives inside larger batteries.
Where the RIOT IQ test fits
The ROCF is a clinical instrument, administered one-on-one and interpreted by a trained professional against a specific referral question. If you are a healthy adult who is simply curious about your own visuospatial strengths, a normed cognitive ability test is the more appropriate tool. The Reasoning and Intelligence Online Test, developed by RIOT IQ with psychometrician Dr. Russell T. Warne, measures spatial ability as one of six cognitive indices, alongside verbal reasoning, fluid reasoning, working memory, processing speed, and reaction time, across 15 subtests for adults 18 and older. It takes about 52 minutes and reports scores on the familiar mean-100, standard-deviation-15 scale. It does not replace an individually administered diagnostic evaluation, but it offers a rigorous, well-normed picture of how your spatial and memory-related abilities compare with other adults. You can take the RIOT IQ test at riotiq.com.
Frequently asked questions
How long does the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test take?
The publisher of the standard commercial version reports about 45 minutes in total, which includes the 30-minute delay interval before the final recall trial.
What is a good score on the ROCF?
There is no single passing score. Each trial is scored out of 36 points, and results are compared with norms for the person's age, since expected performance differs substantially between, say, a 25-year-old and an 80-year-old. Education level also affects scores.
Is the ROCF an IQ test?
No. It measures specific abilities, mainly visuospatial construction and visual memory, rather than general intelligence, although performance on it correlates with broader reasoning measures such as Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices.
Can children take the test?
Yes. The Rey Complex Figure Test and Recognition Trial published by PAR is normed for ages 6 to 89, and developmental researchers use the figure to study how planning and drawing organization mature in childhood.
Why is the delayed recall trial important?
The delayed trial shows whether visual information was retained over time. Someone can encode the figure well enough to reproduce it immediately yet lose much of it over 30 minutes, a pattern that helps clinicians distinguish types of memory difficulty.
Who administers and interprets the ROCF?
Neuropsychologists and other trained clinicians administer it as part of a broader evaluation. Scoring follows detailed criteria, and interpretation takes the person's age, education, medical history, and other test results into account.
References
1. Shin, M.-S., Park, S.-Y., Park, S.-R., Seol, S.-H., & Kwon, J. S. (2006). Clinical and empirical applications of the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test. Nature Protocols, 1(2), 892–899. doi.org
2. Frigeni, M., Petilli, M. A., Gobbo, S., Di Giusto, V., Zorzi, C. F., Rabuffetti, M., Spinelli, F., Gower, V., Daini, R., & Cavallini, A. (2024). Tablet-based Rey–Osterrieth Complex Figure copy task: A novel application to assess spatial, procedural, and kinematic aspects of drawing in children. Scientific Reports, 14, 16787. nature.com
3. Meyers, J. E., & Meyers, K. R. Rey Complex Figure Test and Recognition Trial (RCFT). PAR, Inc. parinc.com
4. Schreiber, H. E., Javorsky, D. J., Robinson, J. E., & Stern, R. A. (1999). Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure performance in adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: A validation study of the Boston Qualitative Scoring System. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 13(4), 509–520. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
5. Jamus, D. R., Mäder-Joaquim, M. J., de Paula Souza, L., de Paola, L., Claro-Höpker, C. D., Terra, V. C., & Soares Silvado, C. E. (2023). Rey-Osterrieth complex figure test: Comparison of traditional and qualitative scoring systems after unilateral temporal lobectomy. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 37(2), 416–431. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
6. Ahn, H., Cha, W. J., Woo, D. H., Ha, S., Kim, K., Choi, H., Byun, M. S., Jung, G., Yi, D., & Lee, D. Y. (2025). Performance on the Rey-Osterrieth complex figure test in non-demented middle-aged and elderly Koreans. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, 105(3), 837–848. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
7. Andersen, S. L., Lundervold, A. J., & Ronold, E. H. (2026). Automated versus human scoring of the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test: A rapid review. Frontiers in Psychiatry. frontiersin.org
Hero photo: a hand with a pencil sketching precise line-drawing figures on paper. Photo by Green Chameleon via Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash, CC0 public domain dedication (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/), cropped.
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