The verbal battery has three elements: verbal classification, sentence completion and verbal analogies. In verbal classification, a student sees a group of words that all share some characteristic, then must choose a word that has the same characteristic. For example, the group might be "plate, spoon, cup" and the choices are "food, fork, dinner, kitchen." The first three are eating implements, so the correct answer is "fork." Sentence completion gives students a sentence with a word missing, and they must choose the most appropriate word for the space from a list. Verbal analogies tests the students' ability to recognize relationships between words. For example "cat is to kitten as cow is to (blank)," with the possible answers "horse, calf, milk, farm."
The quantitative battery's three elements are quantitative relations, number series and equation building. In quantitative relations, the student sees two number problems -- for example, "10+2" and "15-3" -- and has to identify whether the first is larger, the second is larger or they are equal. Number series tests the ability to identify a pattern in a list of numbers and provide the next number. So, for "9, 12, 15, 18," the next number would be 21. In equation building, the student gets a group of numbers and math symbols and must arrange them to produce one of the possible answers. For example, if given the group "10, 5, 4, +, -" and the possible answers "6, 7, 8, 9," the correct answer is 9. That's because 10+4-5=9, and there's no way to produce any of the other possible answers.
The nonverbal battery is made up of figure classification, figure analogies and figure analysis. In figure classification, the student sees a group of figures that all have something in common -- number of sides, say, or a marking or a color -- and then must choose the figure that belongs in the group. In figure analogies, the student sees two related figures, plus a third. The student must figure out the relationship between the first two, and then match the third figure with one of the answer choices based on that same relationship. In figure analysis, the student sees an image of a folded piece of paper with holes cut in it and must figure out what the paper will look like unfolded.
The CogAT for kindergartners, first-graders and third-graders leans more toward testing general ability rather than the more specific skills of the tests for third grade and up. The verbal battery consists of oral vocabulary, which tests the extent of word knowledge, and verbal reasoning. The quantitative battery's elements are relational concepts, which involves comparing items and judging them in comparison to each other, and quantitative concepts, which includes word problems and number-series problems. The nonverbal battery includes figure classification and matrices, which is a simplified version of figure analogies.