Unlike many individual ability tests, the WJ III® Tests of Cognitive Abilities are explicitly designed to assess a student’s abilities on many specific McGrew, Flanagan, and Ortiz Integrated Cattell-Horn-Carroll Gf-Gc (CHC) "cognitive factors," not just a total score or a few factors. Each of seven tests in the Standard Battery is designed to measure one factor. The Extended Battery offers 7 more tests to make two for each factor. There are 3 Standard and 3 Extended tests that contribute to additional Clinical Clusters. Tests can also be combined into a General Intellectual Ability (GIA Std) score of 7 or 14 tests (GIA Ext) and into several Cognitive Categories. Examiners are permitted to select the tests they need to assess abilities in which they are interested for a particular student. The WJ III® was normed on 8,818 children and adults (4,783 in grades kindergarten through 12) in a well-designed, national sample. The same persons also provided norms for the WJ III® tests of academic achievement, so the ability and achievement tests can be compared directly, and cognitive and achievement tests can be combined to measure CHC factors.

The description below are not the "official" descriptions provided by the WJ III® manual.

1.   Verbal Comprehension. Naming pictures, giving ant-- or synonyms for spoken words, and completing oral analogies.
11. General Information. Answering "where" and "what" factual questions.

2.   Visual-Auditory Learning. The student is taught rebus symbols for words and tries to "read" sentences written with the symbols.
12. Retrieval Fluency. The student tries to name as many things as possible in one minute in each of three specified categories, e.g., fruits.

3.   Spatial Relations. The student tries to select by sight alone, from many choices, the fragments that could be assembled into a given geometric shape.
13. Picture Recognition. The student is shown one or more pictures and then tries to identify it or them on another page that includes several similar pictures

5. Concept Formation. For each item, the student tries to figure out the rule that divides a set of symbols into two groups.
15. Analysis-Synthesis. The student tries to solve logical puzzles involving color codes similar to mathematical and scientific symbolic rules.

6.  Visual Matching. As quickly as possible for three minutes, the student circles two identical numbers in each row of six numbers.
16. Decision Speed. As quickly as possible for three minutes, the student tries to find the two pictures in each row that are most similar conceptually (e.g., sundial and stopwatch).

7.   Numbers Reversed. Repeating increasingly long series of dictated digits in reversed order.
17. Memory for Words. The student tries to repeat dictated random series of words in order.

8.  Incomplete Words. The student attempts to recognize words dictated with some sounds omitted. Ga.
9.  Auditory Working Memory. The student tries to repeat randomly dictated words and numbers (e.g., cow 9 up 3 5) with the words first and then the numbers in the order they were dictated. This test also measures Gsm or working memory or division of attention.
10. Visual-Auditory Learning – Delayed. The student tries again to "read" sentences written with the rebuses learned in Visual-Auditory Learning. There are norms from one half-hour to 8 days. This is an additional measure of Glr.
18. Rapid Picture Naming. The student tries to name simple pictures as quickly as possible for 2 minutes. This test measures Gs and naming facility or Rapid Automatized Naming RAN)
19. Planning. The student tries to trace a complex, overlapping path without lifting the pencil, retracing any part of the path, or skipping any part. Gf and Gv are involved in this test.
20. Pair Cancellation. The student tries scans rows of pictures and tries, as quickly as possible for 3 minutes to circle each instance in which a certain picture is followed by a certain other picture (e.g., each cat followed by a tree). This test also measures Gs.