My daughter scored >99th% for reading on the Iowa test in reading but even lower for verbal IQ on the CogAT (<100 IQ). She does not have a below average verbal IQ, period.
Based on my own experience as a child, I think that some verbal tests are poorly defined, and children can actually out-think / over-think them, to the point that they will miss questions by thinking, "I don't get it."
I know this because during my own training for standardized tests as an adult (I went back for a post-graduate degree in my thirties), I was told, "You are over-thinking this. The right answer is not exactly right. Just answer the way you think the average person would answer."
I moved from 85th% on every verbal standardized test I'd taken in my life to (I am not making this up--I could probably find the results if necessary) 99.99th%.
This is because the tests often try to determine
whether you understand what others are trying to say, rather than what they actually managed to convey.
Your ability to fill in the gaps for others is a major part of some verbal IQ tests. I have no idea why this is, but it must work that way, because otherwise I could not have upped my scores so much. I also went back and took a different verbal IQ test online. It put me higher than I should have been, but still, I used to score much lower than in the math/logic area, and this put me higher.
If only I'd have known as a child that they wanted me to tell them what I thought my most average, boring teacher would say the answer is, rather than what I thought the answer really was, based on the information provided, I could have probably been a National Merit Scholar.
Oh well--I got a great score for my GRE!
