Low Verbal Classification Score on CogAT
By Inderbir Kaur Sandhu, Ph.D
Q: I just used the CogAT to assess a
student and got back an interesting result of an extremely low verbal
classification score when all other sub-tests were up in the 8th and 9th
stanines. Please help me understand how to help this student with
building on strength and building that verbal cognition to better match
the quantitative and non-verbal strength.
A:
The verbal score reveals the student's ability to perceive the meaning
of and relationships between words and word combinations. Since the
evaluation of verbal reasoning depends on effective reading, the
reasoning ability of poor readers may not be fully revealed. Students
are tested in this area by performing sentence completion, solving
verbal analogies, and figuring out the relationships between the
meanings of words.
Stanine scores range from a low of 1 to a high of 9. Stanines are
groupings of percentile ranks. A higher stanine equates with a higher
level of cognitive abilities development. Since his scores are almost in
the 8th and 9th stanines, it is rather unusual to have extremely low
score in verbal classification if the child does not have any learning
disability.
Therefore, this child may have a verbal learning disability which needs
attention. You may want to get help to further diagnose the problem
before intervening in the learning process. This should be done as soon
as possible because the other scores are in the high extreme, which, as
you mention is rather interesting. Furthermore, there is no indication
of age which makes it hard to suggest activities. My advice is to
consider testing his verbal skills to rule out any verbal concerns
before attempting remedy to improve his verbal skills.
Good luck!
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