Cognitive development in preschool is an important indicator of school readiness. It is in this period that possible developmental difficulties can be reliably detected and the necessary support can be given to the child in time. In the Czech environment, there is still no consensus on what tools to use to assess school readiness, and the available methods are not very reliable and tend to be used rather unsystematically. There is also a lack of uniform methodological guidance and tools for widespread use. Modern approaches, such as adaptive testing and tablet-based administration, are common abroad - and it is this gap that a team of Czech researchers, including Hynek Cígler from INPSY, decided to fill with a new tool called Brief Adaptive Nonverbal Test (BANT), which provides a fast, playful and reliable way to measure non-verbal cognitive skills in children aged 4-7 years and has the potential to make a significant contribution to assessing school readiness.
The development of the BANT is a collaboration between the private and academic sectors. The development was primarily carried out by iSophi Education, but experts from the Department of Psychology at Charles University, the Psychological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, the National Pedagogical Institute (NPI) of the Czech Republic and Masaryk University (INPSY MU) were involved in the development. The study has just been published in the journal Československá psychologie and describes the development of the test and its psychometric parameters - the author team consisted of Simona Pekárková, Martina Švandová, Matěj Seifert, Hynek Cígler, Jiří Štipl and Filip Smolík.
The study describes the possibilities of creating a short and adaptive test focusing on visual-spatial reasoning and non-verbal reasoning. At the suggestion of Prof. F. Smolík, the test was also one of the few in the Czech Republic to use so-called computer adaptive testing, a method of measurement in which the difficulty of tasks is automatically adjusted to the child's performance - easier tasks are given to those who do less well, while more difficult ones are given to those who answer correctly. Hynek Cígler from INPSY (together with Adam Ťápal, also from INPSY, who was not among the authors of the published study) was behind the design of this adaptive mechanism. The author team focused on preschool children and built on the iSophi Myška battery of pedagogical diagnostics for school readiness, administered via a tablet application. The authors validated the properties of the test in two phases - first by calibrating the items, then verifying its reliability, validity and functionality on an independent sample of children.
A compelling test with great potential for Czech diagnostics
The main findings showed that the adaptive form of the test can significantly reduce the testing time - from the original average of 7.6 minutes in the fixed version to approximately 2.8 minutes. In doing so, the test maintained a high level of measurement accuracy and reliability. The test also showed very good validity properties. Its results were strongly related to tasks from the Mouse application, some subtests of which measure similar abilities. In contrast, weaker relationships emerged with tests of language skills or tasks requiring verbal instructions, confirming that the BANT does indeed measure primarily nonverbal components of thinking as intended. Thanks to its digital format and playfulness, the test keeps children's attention and motivates them to complete the tasks. It also includes feedback for educators and parents in the form of simple graphical outputs. The authors plan to supplement the results with age-appropriate norms and work outcomes tailored for both teachers and psychology professionals.
Thus, the test has great potential as an assessment tool for preschoolers and school-entry children, especially in terms of early identification of developmental risks. Because it does not require verbal responses, it is also suitable for children who may have language barriers - for example, children with limited English proficiency or with certain types of communication and speech difficulties. The BANT is also well suited to children from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, as its non-verbal nature minimises cultural bias and the test makes do with simple verbal input.
The measurement of cognitive abilities in children entering first grade is highly topical today, not least because in July 2025, an amendment to the Education Act was approved by the Parliament, which virtually abolishes the deferment of compulsory schooling. Without a serious medical or psychiatric diagnosis, deferment will no longer be possible from 2026, and as Hynek Cígler and Zuzana Masopustová from the Department of Psychology at the MUNI FSS have pointed out in the past, this will mean that children who are not ready to learn reading, writing, or arithmetic will start school. It can be very beneficial for teachers to be able to check the pupils' aptitudes in an independent way and to adapt their work with them accordingly. BANT can easily serve just such a purpose.
However, research has its limits. At the moment, the test is mainly suitable for children without significant visual impairments, and although it is non-verbal, it has been calibrated in the Czech cultural and educational context - therefore, its applicability in other populations needs to be verified (for example, the standardisation of the test in Slovakia is currently planned). Another limitation may be the administration via a tablet, which requires skills in using modern technologies. Furthermore, the development of the test is continuing by expanding the set of items to include more challenging items in order to more accurately distinguish children with above-average abilities (pilot study will take place in autumn 2025). Overall, however, the research team has succeeded in creating a modern, effective and accessible tool for children, which may in the future significantly enrich the diagnosis of school maturity and readiness in the Czech Republic.
Recommended citation:
Pekárková, S., Švandová, M., Seifert, M., Cígler, H., Štipl, J., & Smolík, F. (2025). Brief Adaptive Nonverbal Test (BANT), the diagnostic tool evaluating nonverbal cognitive skills in preschool-aged children. Československá psychologie, 69(3, zvláštní číslo), 176–190. https://doi.org/10.51561/cspsych.69.3.176
