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Cognitive Abilities Tests (CATs)
Year 7 students undertake these tests to help our understanding of each students potential and progress.
The Cognitive Abilities Test (CATs) assesses a student's ability to reason with and manipulate different types of symbols. Three main types of symbols play substantial roles in human thought: symbols representing words, symbols representing quantities and symbols representing spatial, geometric or figural patterns.
Verbal
The verbal reasoning element assesses reasoning processes using the medium of words. Such processes include: identifying relationships between things (e.g. 'big' is the opposite of 'small'); creating correlates of such relationships (e.g. 'big' is to 'small' as 'thick' is to 'thin'); identifying classes ('hat', 'gloves,'____?’: pyjamas, slippers, scarf), and reasoning deductively ('A' is taller than 'B' and 'B' is taller than 'C'; therefore 'A' is taller than 'C'). It is not therefore an assessment of reasoning with words, not that of language skills such as speaking, listening or writing.
Quantitative
The quantitative tests look at the same processes but use numbers as the symbols. For example determining rules by analogy and applying these to new cases (2->3, 9->10, 6->_? ), determining patterns and relationships in series (1, 4, 7, _? ), or combining elements to form number sentences.
Non-verbal
The non-verbal tests again look at reasoning processes but use shapes and figures. Because these questions require no knowledge of English language, or the number system, they are particularly useful when assessing children with poor English language skills, or disaffected pupils who may have failed to achieve in academic work for motivational reasons.
The test results provide us with a profile of the student. This profile can help us to understand the student’s areas of relative strength and weakness as well as giving an indication of potential.