Verbal Reasoning: Picture Analogies, Sentence Completion, and Picture Classification
The Verbal Reasoning battery on CogAT Kindergarten measures how a child listens, understands spoken words, and uses relationships among ideas. At this level the teacher reads the directions and answer choices aloud, and the child responds by choosing a picture, so the test is designed to measure verbal thinking rather than reading. The battery contains three subtests: Picture Analogies, Sentence Completion, and Picture Classification.
Core rules
- Picture Analogies: Find the relationship in the first pair, then apply the same relationship to the second pair. Kindergarten relationships include category (a dog is an animal), function (a spoon is for eating), part–whole (a wheel is part of a car), location (a fish lives in water), opposite (hot/cold), and action (a bird flies).
- Sentence Completion: Listen for the word or phrase that limits the answer: who, what doing, where, with what, or an opposite. The correct picture must fit the whole sentence, not just one word.
- Picture Classification: Three pictures belong to one group; choose the fourth that follows the same rule. The rule may be category, function, or a shared feature such as “things that fly.”
Worked example
“Sock is to foot as mitten is to ___,” with picture choices hand, head, shoe, and coat. The first pair is a worn-on relationship: a sock is worn on a foot. A mitten is worn on a hand, so hand is correct. The shoe is the closest trap because it is also worn, but it is worn on a foot; the relationship must match, not merely the topic.
Traps that cost marks
- Choosing a picture linked to the first word but not the second, as with the shoe above.
- Ignoring a function word such as “not” or “never” in a sentence.
- In classification, choosing an item that shares only color or size while missing the category rule.
- Stopping after the first word that seems to fit instead of listening to the full sentence.