The NNAT is entirely nonverbal by design: no reading, no arithmetic, no language anywhere in it. That makes it fair for children still learning English, and it makes the question types genuinely unfamiliar the first time a child meets one. Try five below, no account needed.
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The screener districts choose when language should not affect the result.
Unlike the CogAT, the NNAT is a single nonverbal measure. There is no verbal or quantitative section to prepare separately.
A piece is missing from a design. The child finds the piece that continues the pattern exactly, including its orientation.
One pair of shapes shows a change. The same change is applied to a second shape.
A sequence of shapes develops by a rule that has to be spotted and continued.
Shapes are rotated or combined, and the child pictures the result without turning the page.
The NNAT reports a Naglieri Ability Index, a standard score built so that the middle of the range is easy to read, alongside a percentile rank comparing the child with others of the same age.
| Naglieri Ability Index (NAI) | mean 100, standard deviation 15 | The published range runs from 40 to 160. |
|---|---|---|
| Percentile rank | reported alongside the NAI | A rank of 90 means the child scored above 90% of the same-age comparison group. |
| Levels | A to G | Levels A to D cover the younger grades; levels E to G cover grades 5 to 12. |
| Commonly cited gifted range | 95th percentile and above | As with every screener here, the district sets the real threshold. |
The NAI is age-normed, so the comparison group is children of the same age rather than the same class. District thresholds and how the NNAT is combined with other measures vary and are revisited, so check your district's current criteria.
Pearson publishes the third edition, NNAT3, with separate manuals for levels A to D and levels E to G. Which level a child sits is set by grade.
The test contains no reading and no arithmetic. Districts use it precisely so that a child's English fluency or reading speed does not shape the result.
New York City has historically used the NNAT and the OLSAT together for gifted admission, weighted evenly. Those admissions rules have been rebuilt more than once, so confirm the current arrangement before relying on it.
Published by Pearson. We are not affiliated with them, and these practice questions are our own.
The Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test, published by Pearson and now in its third edition as NNAT3, is a gifted screener made entirely of shape and pattern puzzles. It contains no words and no arithmetic, so a child's reading level or first language does not affect the score. Many districts use it for exactly that reason.
Four: pattern completion, where a piece is missing from a design; reasoning by analogy, where one pair of shapes shows a change you apply to another; serial reasoning, where a sequence of shapes continues; and spatial visualization, where shapes are rotated or combined. Which types appear depends on the level, which is set by grade.
The NNAT reports a Naglieri Ability Index with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, on a published range of 40 to 160, plus a percentile rank. Districts commonly look at the 95th percentile and above, but the cutoff and the way it is combined with other measures vary by district and by year. Your school is the only reliable source for the number that applies to your child.
The CogAT has verbal and quantitative batteries alongside its nonverbal one; the NNAT is nonverbal the whole way through. A child who reasons well but reads slowly, or who is new to English, often shows better on the NNAT, which is why some districts prefer it for screening.
Levels A to G, assigned by grade. Pearson publishes separate manuals for levels A to D and for levels E to G, which covers grades 5 to 12. The question types that appear shift with the level, so practice should match the child's grade rather than the test in general.
You cannot study content for it, because there is no content to study. What practice does is remove the novelty: the first pattern completion item a child sees costs them time simply working out the format. After a handful, that cost disappears and what is left is their reasoning, which is what the test is trying to measure.
It has been. New York City has historically used the NNAT for half of the gifted and talented assessment with the OLSAT making up the other half. That programme has been restructured more than once in recent years, so treat this as background and confirm the current rules with the city before planning around them.
Yes, the NNAT is a timed test, and the time allowed depends on the level. Because the items are unfamiliar, children who have never seen the format often lose time to confusion rather than to difficulty, which is the strongest argument for sitting a few beforehand.
NNAT3 is the current edition published by Pearson and is what schools administer now. The question types are the same four; the edition update refreshed the items and the norms. Practice built on the four types applies to either.
The NNAT runs from kindergarten upwards, and the youngest levels use larger, simpler figures. For a five year old the useful preparation is not drilling but making sure the format is not a surprise, and keeping the session short enough that you are measuring reasoning rather than stamina.
No. It is a group-administered measure of nonverbal reasoning used for screening. It correlates with general ability measures but it is not an individually administered IQ assessment, and it is not a diagnosis of anything.
A timed test the length of the real thing, scored, with every wrong answer explained.
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