How Much of Each Gifted Test Is Pictures, Not Words?

“Is it a reading test?” is the first thing parents ask about gifted screening — and the answer changes completely depending on which test their district uses. We measured the composition of 57,154 questions across our gifted and cognitive banks, splitting every question into figural (pictures, shapes, matrices) or text-based.

Key findings

• NNAT and Raven's Progressive Matrices contain essentially no reading at all — they are pure pattern tests. A child who has never seen a figure matrix is at a disadvantage no amount of vocabulary work will fix.
• Across every gifted test we measured, 49% of content is figural rather than verbal.
• The CogAT, CCAT, OLSAT and WISC-V mix both — so preparation has to cover words and pictures, which is where most worksheet-based prep falls down.
• SCAT (CTY) are text-based, so reading fluency genuinely does carry weight there.

Share of each test that is pictures, not words

What this means for preparing

Find out which test your district uses before you buy anything — it's the single most consequential fact, and it's usually published on the district's gifted page. If it's the NNAT or Raven's, vocabulary drills are close to wasted effort; time goes into pattern completion, rotation, and figure analogies instead. If it's the CogAT, OLSAT or CCAT, your child needs both — and the figural half is the half school rarely teaches.

Check your district in our district gifted-testing guide, then practise the right format free at free practice questions by test and grade.

Methodology

Figures are computed live from the iPrepGenius question bank (131,000+verified, unretired practice questions at the time you loaded this page). Our banks are original practice content modeled on each test's published blueprint and format; they are not actual test items, and findings describe our bank's composition — a faithful proxy for, but not a publication of, the tests themselves. Difficulty ratings use our 1–5 scale assigned at generation and refined by calibration. Aggregated practice statistics, where shown, are fully anonymized. You're welcome to cite this study with a link.