In general, people here have not found the CogAT to be a very reliable instrument, if that's what he took.
I may be wrong, but in reading posts I formed the impression that those who did not like the CogAT were generally parents whose children did not do well with the timed aspect... the lower CogAT scores of these children were mirrored in lower Processing Speed Index (PSI) and/or lower Working Memory Index (WMI) on Welscher tests.
Our EG ds did not do well on the CogAT Verbal in spite of having an accommodation of having the questions read out loud to him and *not* being timed on it - the issue was outside-the-box thinking when he answered the questions. There were also questions on the CogAT verbal that required "learned" knowledge that he hadn't been exposed to. He's a kid who scores extremely high on other types of verbal ability tests, including the verbal portion of the WISC, but he only scored in the 72nd or so percentile on the CogAT verbal. When he got the "low" score on the CogAT I did a bit of research online, and found there were quite a few other HG/+ kids who had the same type of scoring pattern - presumably from the same type of outside-the-box reasoning.
polarbear
ps - to the OP - I wouldn't worry about the gap in non-verbal vs verbal yet. I would ask the tester if you can have any further details re subtest scores etc, and if the tester observed any signs of boredom, tiredness, inability to complete tasks etc on the verbal part. Since their will be further testing done, you'll have a chance to see if this one low score was random or part of a pattern. If it is part of a pattern of low verbal - then I'd think through, do you see any signs of struggle or challenge at school that might relate to it? I'm guessing you most likely don't though, and it's most likely just one random relatively lower score.
