Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment CogAT Test Question

Hi there, My 8 year old daughter recently took the CogAT test for the first time and her results seem a little odd. She scored a 97 in Verbal, a 52 in Quantitative (no surprise, she doesn't like math), a *38* in Nonverbal, for a composite score of 73 and interactive score profile of 5E(V+). The non-verbal section seems to be most tied to reasoning and innate intelligence and so we're a little concerned. She is currently in her public school's G & T program, is a straight A student and was assessed at a 6-7th grade reading level. I personally think she's just a bright kid but not necessarily G &T. (But I didn't argue the point, since she loves her G & T class :-)) Any thoughts around why she would score so low in this one section and next steps, if any? P.S. As a child I scored exeptionally high on the Iowa Basics - 97-99 on everything, except math, where I scored somewhere around a 30/;7th grade Stanford Binet scored me as 2nd year college for everything but math, where I scored 3rd grade. Thank you!

Perhaps the test was administered by a teacher she didn't like? Or she wasn't feeling well that day? Or they made her sit next to another student she didn't like? CogAT is typically a group-administered test, so I wouldn't worry too much. You can ask for the full report - perhaps she didn't even answer all the questions?

Thanks, Epoch. Her G&T teacher said that her verbal skills are very high, two standard deviations from the mean and well within "gifted" guidelines. She also advised that there are often uneven subset scores, rendering the composite almost meaningless. My concern was that this could keep her out of the advanced academics program next year, which would just crush her, but her teacher advised that isn't the case. She does NOT like puzzles / "shapes" games etc. but will start working on fun games to help her catch up.

A couple possible thoughts come to mind:

* what epoh said
* a non-verbal learning disability. If your math issues were related to a NVLD, that could be heritable. Does she have trouble with visual spatial reasoning (rotating things in space, for instance or recognizing how something would appear from a different angle)? Does she have any trouble in math?
* speed issues; the test is timed after grade two

Although my 2e HG kid did, by far, the best on the non-verbal section, I don't know that I'd say that part is the most tied to intelligence. Mine overall did a lot better on individually administered IQ tests than the CogAT and I'm, thus, not as huge of a fan of groups tests (well, that and that the test producers specifically say that they aren't meant to measure intelligence, but learned skills). I would say that the non-verbal section comes the closest to the types of things measured on part of IQ tests but really only the parts that look at perceptual or visual spatial skills. A child with high abilities in other areas who has that one weaker area may still be gifted or the test may just be a poor test for that child.