WPPSI
Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence
The WPPSI is the younger sibling of the WISC: the Wechsler IQ test for preschool and the first years of school. Private schools and some kindergarten gifted programs ask for it.
It has a shorter set of activities for children under 4 and a fuller one from age 4. Everything is spoken or shown, so no reading or writing is needed. Children point, talk, and build with blocks.
- Ages
- 2 years 6 months to 7 years 7 months
- How it is given
- One-to-one with a psychologist, with picture books, blocks and puzzles
- How long
- About 30 to 45 minutes under age 4, about 45 to 60 from age 4
What it measures
- Words and understanding: naming pictures and explaining what things are
- Visual-spatial thinking: copying a design with blocks, putting a picture together
- Reasoning: finding the picture that fits a pattern or goes with a group
- Memory: remembering pictures that were just shown
- Speed (from age 4): quick matching and marking tasks
What you can do
- For a young child, comfort matters most. Say they will play games with a new grown-up while you wait nearby.
- Practice sitting at a table for a short task and listening to an adult who is not you, for example at story time.
- Talk about pictures in books: what is happening, what is missing, what goes together.
- Play with blocks, shape sorters and simple jigsaws.
Practice for the same skills
None of these is the WPPSI. Each one builds a general skill it draws on, in a short, friendly format your child can try at home.
- CogAT KindergartenPicture questions read aloud, no reading needed: the kind of puzzle young children meet one-to-one too.Try it
- NNAT KindergartenShape and color patterns with no words, for children who are not reading yet.Try it
- Matrices-style, KindergartenColored picture patterns with six choices and no clock.Try it
- Free brain testTwenty puzzles with words, numbers and shapes for ages 5 to 13. No account needed, and not an IQ test.Try it
Practice the skills, not the test
These tests are given in person by a trained examiner, and their questions are kept private: publishers do not sell them to families, and nobody can lawfully offer the real items. Nothing on this site is taken from them.
Drilling a child on copies of the questions would not help either. A result is only meaningful if the questions are new to your child, so a rehearsed score can place them in a program that does not fit, and a psychologist may set it aside.
Other tests
- WISC-V
- Stanford-Binet 5
- KABC-II
- KBIT-2
- RIAS-2
- WASI-II
- Woodcock-Johnson and WIAT
- Bracken (BSRA)
- SAGES-3
- Raven's
- Spatial Test Battery
- Torrance and CAP
Test names belong to their publishers and to the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. Scholar Tests is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them, and nothing on these pages is taken from a test. Ages and times are the publishers' published ranges; editions change, so check the details with the person giving the test.