Verbal Reasoning: Picture Analogies, Sentence Completion, and Picture Classification
The CogAT Level 8 Verbal battery, taken in second grade, measures verbal inductive reasoning and vocabulary through pictures and short spoken sentences rather than extended reading. It has three subtests: Picture Analogies, Sentence Completion, and Picture Classification. In Sentence Completion, the test administrator reads the sentence aloud, so a candidate's job is to listen for meaning, not to decode long text.
Core rules
- Picture Analogies: Find the exact relationship in the first pair, then apply the same relationship to the second pair. Common relationships are category (a dog is an animal), function (a saw cuts), part-to-whole (a wheel is part of a car), location (a fish lives in water), and opposites (hot/cold).
- Sentence Completion: Use the rest of the sentence as evidence. Ask what job the missing word must do: a naming word, an action word, or a describing word. Then choose the option that makes the whole sentence sensible.
- Picture Classification: All three given pictures must belong to one category. Test each option against that category; a picture that is merely associated with the others is not enough.
Worked example
A picture shows a glove next to a hand, and then a sock next to a question mark. Options: foot, shoe, leg, winter. The first pair is "something worn on a body part â the body part." A glove is worn on a hand, so a sock is worn on a foot. Foot is correct. Shoe is a trap because shoes are worn on feet, but the relationship is "garment to the body part it covers," and a shoe is not the body part.
Traps that cost marks
- Matching by topic instead of relationship. In the example above, shoe shares the clothing topic but breaks the rule.
- In Classification, choosing a picture that shares color or shape with one picture while ignoring the category the three originals share.
- In Sentence Completion, selecting a word that sounds natural but reverses the sentence's meaning, such as choosing cold when the sentence says "The soup was too ___ to eat."
- Rushing past the second pair in an analogy before naming the first pair's relationship in a complete sentence.