Parents have an instinctive quality to always motivate their children to do their best and visualize their children to perform well in all areas of life. In other words, all parents want their child to become genius. This being said, it is really sad, that despite their best efforts, most parents remain unaware of their child’s inherent qualities that can actually make them a genius. Each child has a different set of talents that can make a child not only an intellectual but also a genius. In this way, every child is a genius, and it is only a matter of time, before someone, recognizes a child’s true talent. Moreover, people can detect the true talent of every person via cognitive testing method. The test evaluates a child on the basis of the child’s performance in three sections namely quantitative, non-verbal, and verbal skills. For those who did not know, cognition basically refers to the skill with which the mind carries out, in a dexterous manner, various functions that it is capable of carrying out, and that involves abilities like paying attention, retention of memory, reasoning, solving of problems and making decisions apart from more complex abilities. In other words, cognition is understood as the ease with which a person’s brain formulates a thought or plan, by drawing knowledge from preeminent sources and sensory perceptions. Cognitive testing is a process, via which it can be determined about a child’s cognitive abilities. It is used to get an idea about a person’s cognitive abilities and their mental prowess using a couple of tests that are specifically designed to test and highlight such abilities in the person who is giving the test. It also sheds light on the brilliance of the test taker. A very popular cognitive test is the cogat test.
Main Aim of Cogat Test
The main abilities that most cognitive tests aim at testing are the functions of execution, attention and memory. Each of these functions can be broken down further, so as to deeply assess any specific function. For example, the brain has the capability of storing memories in two forms, namely short term and long term memory. One of the most celebrated cognition tests, cogat test, also tests both the memories separately. Both of these memories are tested on a separate basis in cognitive testing. As the complete process of evaluation of a person’s cognitive abilities would involve a series of tests, each testing has different function and sub-function, the entire process spans over a period of almost two and a half days, with around two to three evaluations taking place each day.
Sections of Cogat Test Described:
The Cogat Test is one of the most trusted and pioneering ways to test a person’s cognitive abilities. It consists of three sections, which are the quantitative reasoning section, the verbal reasoning section and non-verbal reasoning section. These sections have been described in detail below:
1) Quantitative Reasoning Section- As the very name suggests this section primarily deals with numbers and a person’s mathematical skills. In this section, the test taker is supposed to answer problems using various mathematical operations and techniques. The test seeks to judge the ease with which people are able to work with numbers and mathematical techniques to derive solutions to problems. This section comprises of three sections. The three sub-sections in the cogat test are quantitative relations, number series and the last one is that of equation building. These sub-sections are designed to judge the quantitative reasoning of the test taker from different angles.
2) Verbal Reasoning Section- The next section in the cogat test concentrates on the level of verbal skills exhibited by the test taker as it tests the verbal reasoning prowess of the person taking the test. Mostly this section includes problems related to verbal analogies, completion of sentences and lingual thesaurus. The test taker has to solve these problems and show how adept he or she is with verbal reasoning. This section automatically also judges the fluency of the person. Like the former section of the cogat test, this section too has three sub-sections, namely, verbal analogies, verbal classification and sentence completion. All these sections are designed to shed light on the verbal reasoning ability of the test taker through different angles. In order to clear this section, a person needs to exhibit strong reading comprehension, critical writing and reasoning skills.
3) Non-Verbal Reasoning Section- The third and the last section of the cogat test is that of the non-verbal reasoning section. This section deals with measuring the comprehension and reasoning abilities of an individual, while using geometric figures and shapes. In this section of the test, test takers have to figure out the patterns for solutions, from a given set of geometric shapes and figures. The good news is that for performing well in this section, one need not have any previous knowledge of any different subject. As was the case with the other two sections of the Cogat Test, this section is also divided into three sub-sections.
This test is just a way to evaluate the reasoning and problem solving skills of the person taking the test. These have no correlation with a person’s prominent knowledge or studies. It is this reason, behind the fact that the test produces very contrasting results to what people maybe believing about their talents.