What is the PAT-2: NU? The Phonological Awareness Test, Second Edition, Normative Update
The PAT-2: NU is PRO-ED's individually administered phonological awareness test for children aged 5 to 9. It is not an IQ test. Here is how it works.
Dr. Russell T. WarneChief Scientist
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The PAT-2: NU, the Phonological Awareness Test–Second Edition: Normative Update, is a standardized test of a child's ability to hear and manipulate the sounds inside spoken words and to match those sounds to letters. PRO-ED publishes it, Carolyn Robertson and Wanda Salter wrote it, and it is given one child at a time by a speech-language pathologist, reading specialist, educational diagnostician, school psychologist, or similarly trained educator. It is not an IQ test and it does not produce an IQ score. It measures a narrow band of language and print skills that predict early reading and spelling, which is why it normally appears alongside a cognitive measure in an evaluation rather than in place of one. This article covers what the test contains, who may give it, how its scores work, and where it sits relative to intelligence testing.
What the PAT-2: NU measures, and which edition is current
"Phonological awareness" is the ability to notice and work with the sound structure of spoken language, separately from meaning. A child who can tell you that "cat" and "hat" rhyme, or that removing the first sound from "spin" leaves "pin," is demonstrating it, and neither task requires reading. The narrower skill of working with individual speech sounds is usually called "phonemic awareness."
According to PRO-ED, the PAT-2: NU is a standardized assessment of phonological awareness, phoneme-grapheme correspondence, and phonemic decoding, intended to help educators focus on aspects of oral language that classroom reading instruction may not target systematically. The publisher gives the age range as 5 years 0 months through 9 years 11 months.
The edition matters, because the short name "PAT-2" is now out of date on the publisher's own catalog. PRO-ED lists the PAT-2: NU complete kit, copyright 2018, as the current product. The earlier PAT-2, copyright 2007, survives only as legacy test forms labeled "PREVIOUS Edition," sold so examiners with old kits can keep recording responses. If a school report still says "PAT-2," check whether the scores came from the 2007 norms or the 2018 update, since the two use different score tables.
A "normative update" mainly changes the reference group a child is compared against. PRO-ED reports that the new sample was stratified by age against region, gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic variables using figures from the Statistical Abstract of the United States 2016, that items were screened with both conventional and differential item analysis to remove potentially biased items, and that subtests and composites were checked for floor and ceiling effects. The Examiner's Manual was also rewritten with fuller detail on administration and interpretation.
Who gives the test, and how a session runs
The PAT-2: NU is administered individually and scored by hand, and PRO-ED lists testing time as 40 to 50 minutes. There is no group or computer-adaptive form. An examiner speaks the items aloud and records responses in a paper booklet. The kit contains an Examiner's Manual, two stimuli booklets, manipulative blocks used in one subtest, and 25 Examiner Record Booklets.
PRO-ED assigns the test a qualification code of Level B, which restricts who may buy it. Under the publisher's qualifications policy, Level B products go to buyers holding a relevant master's degree with formal training in the ethical administration, scoring, and interpretation of clinical assessments; or certification or full active membership in a professional body such as ASHA, AOTA, AERA, ACA, CEC, or NBCC; or a degree or license to practice in a healthcare field; or equivalent supervised clinical or educational training in assessing children. PRO-ED states that the policy exists to comply with the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing published jointly by the American Educational Research Association, the American Psychological Association, and the National Council on Measurement in Education.
The eight subtests
PRO-ED describes six core subtests, given across the full 5 to 9 age range, plus two supplemental subtests aimed at ages 6 through 9.
• Rhyming: the child identifies rhyming pairs and produces a rhyming word on demand.
• Segmentation: the child divides material into smaller units, working down from words in a sentence, to syllables, to individual phonemes.
• Isolation: the child identifies the sound occupying the initial, final, or medial position in a word.
• Deletion: the child manipulates compound words, syllables, and phonemes, saying what is left when a part is removed.
• Substitution with manipulatives: the child isolates a phoneme in a word and swaps it for another to make a new word, using colored blocks to represent the sounds.
• Blending: the child blends syllables and then phonemes back together into whole words.
• Phoneme–grapheme correspondence: a supplemental subtest covering knowledge of sound and symbol pairings for consonants, vowels, consonant blends, consonant digraphs, r-controlled vowels, vowel digraphs, and diphthongs.
• Phonemic decoding: a supplemental subtest in which the child applies sound and symbol knowledge to blend sounds into nonsense words, which isolates decoding skill from sight-word memory.
The nonsense-word task matters because a child with a large memorized sight vocabulary can look like a stronger decoder than they are. Invented strings such as "dake" have no memorized form, so performance reflects the sound-to-print system in use.
How PAT-2: NU scores are reported
The publisher reports scores at two levels. Individual subtests yield "scaled scores" with a mean of 10 and a standard deviation of 3, the conventional subtest metric across many educational and psychological batteries. The Total Score is divided into two composites, the Phonological Awareness Index and the Phoneme-Grapheme Index, each with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. PRO-ED describes these as direct linear transformations of the sums of scaled scores, giving equal weight to each contributing subtest. The Examiner Record Booklet also converts raw scores to percentile ranks and age equivalents.
On reliability, PRO-ED reports average coefficient alpha, an index of internal consistency, ranging from .83 to .92 across the subtests, with .96 for the Phonological Awareness Index and .97 for the Phoneme–Grapheme Index. The reliability and validity studies included both children with typical language ability and children previously identified with language impairment or receiving special education services.
For criterion-related validity, PRO-ED compares the test against the Phonological Awareness Composite of the CTOPP-2, reporting a coefficient of .92 for the Phonological Awareness Index and .94 for the Phoneme–Grapheme Index. Correlations that high generally indicate two instruments are measuring close to the same thing, so the choice between them tends to come down to age range and practical fit. PRO-ED lists the CTOPP-2 as covering ages 4-0 through 24-11, whereas the PAT-2: NU stops at 9-11.
Two cautions belong with these numbers. Age equivalents are the least stable score type on the page, since a small raw-score difference near the middle of the distribution can shift one by many months. And every score carries measurement error, so an index value is best read as the center of a plausible band.
How the PAT-2: NU relates to IQ testing
The composites use the same numerical scale as an IQ score, mean 100 with a standard deviation of 15, and that coincidence causes confusion. A Phonological Awareness Index of 100 and an IQ of 100 both mean "average for age," yet they describe different abilities and are not interchangeable. General cognitive ability is a broad construct spanning reasoning, memory, and speed; phonological awareness is one specific skill, and a child can sit well above average on one and below average on the other.
That separation is why these tests exist as a distinct category. Decades of reading research, summarized in the National Reading Panel report commissioned by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, established phonemic awareness and phonics as teachable foundations of early reading. The meta-analysis by Monica Melby-Lervåg, Solveig-Alma Halaas Lyster, and Charles Hulme in Psychological Bulletin found that phonemic awareness in particular is strongly and specifically associated with word reading, including among poor readers.
It also explains why practice has moved away from using IQ as a gatekeeper for reading support. The meta-analysis by Karla Stuebing, Jack Fletcher, and colleagues in the American Educational Research Journal found weak validity for classifying reading disabilities by the gap between IQ and achievement, part of why the field shifted toward direct measurement of the underlying skills. A measure such as the PAT-2: NU supplies that; a cognitive measure describes the broader profile. Our article on whether dyslexia affects IQ test results covers that relationship in more depth.
The PAT-2: NU is diagnostic in scope rather than a quick screen. Brief universal screeners such as DIBELS run in minutes across a whole class to flag who needs a closer look; a 40 to 50 minute individual battery is that closer look. Neither identifies a disability on its own. Interpretation and any diagnosis belong to qualified clinicians working from multiple sources of information.
For adults curious about the general-ability side of that picture, the RIOT IQ test, formally the Reasoning and Intelligence Online Test, is an online assessment for ages 18 and up developed by RIOT IQ with psychometrician Dr. Russell T. Warne. It runs 15 subtests across six cognitive indices, covering verbal reasoning, fluid reasoning, spatial ability, working memory, processing speed, and reaction time, takes about 52 minutes, and reports scores on the mean-100, standard-deviation-15 scale described above. It is built for adults rather than the age band the PAT-2: NU covers, and it does not replace an individually administered diagnostic evaluation.
Frequently asked questions
Is the PAT-2 an IQ test?
No. The PAT-2: NU measures phonological awareness, phoneme-grapheme correspondence, and phonemic decoding. It yields two composites on a 100/15 scale, but neither is an intelligence score and neither estimates general cognitive ability.
What ages does the PAT-2: NU cover?
PRO-ED gives the range as 5 years 0 months through 9 years 11 months. The six core subtests span that whole range; the two supplemental subtests are aimed at ages 6 through 9.
How long does the test take?
PRO-ED lists 40 to 50 minutes of testing time. It is administered individually and scored by hand, so scoring and interpretation add to the examiner's total.
Is the PAT-2 still the current edition?
No. The current PRO-ED product is the PAT-2: NU, the normative update carrying a 2018 copyright. The 2007 PAT-2 appears in the catalog only as legacy test forms marked "PREVIOUS Edition," and scores from the two editions rest on different norms.
Who can buy and administer the PAT-2: NU?
PRO-ED classifies it at qualification Level B, so purchasers must document a relevant master's degree with formal assessment training, certification or full membership in a body such as ASHA or CEC, a healthcare license, or equivalent supervised training in child assessment.
4. PRO-ED. CTOPP-2: Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing–Second Edition, Complete Kit.. proedinc.com
5. Melby-Lervåg, M., Lyster, S.-A. H., & Hulme, C. (2012). Phonological skills and their role in learning to read: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 138(2), 322–352. doi.org
6. Stuebing, K. K., Fletcher, J. M., LeDoux, J. M., Lyon, G. R., Shaywitz, S. E., & Shaywitz, B. A. (2002). Validity of IQ-discrepancy classifications of reading disabilities: A meta-analysis. American Educational Research Journal, 39(2), 469–518. doi.org
7. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read.. nichd.nih.gov
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