Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Surprised by son's average IQ score...help...long

Hoping someone on here may have some insight for us. My son is 6 1/2 years old and in 1st grade. On the advice of quite a few people we had our son tested this summer for giftedness. These people were 2 counselors, a gifted teacher, his pediatrician, his school director from last year, and various other people that know him well. You can pretty much go down a list of gifted traits and he meets most of them. He also meets a lot of criteria for ADHD.

My husband and I expected him to probably score on the bright side if not gifted. What he wound up testing was 105 on the WISC-IV test. We were shocked as was everyone that we had discussed it with prior to his test. One flat out said it was wrong. That there was no way he should have scored average. She wasn't being condescending to those that do just that she knows he is gifted...she had thought he would even test highly gifted (the gifted teacher I mentioned earlier). There are HUGE variabilities in his subtests. They are all over the place. He scored very well in matrix reasoning but horribly low in processing speed. The psychologist said he got all the ones he answered correctly but that he didn't do enough of them in the time limit. This threw up a red flag to me b/c he processes EVERYTHING to the nth degree before making a decision even when he knows the answer right away. The psychologist said we could expect him to do fine in school but not really pick up complex things quickly. I almost laughed since all I have to do is show him a math problem 1-2x and he has it down. I also only had to play one game of chess with him before he started kindergarten for him to pick it up and know all the rules. He practically kills us in checkers and we are good at it! Doesn't seem like the average child should be able to do that from what she described. She didn't take the time to listen to us about his personality and only spent 45 minutes with him giving him the test. She had never met with him before the test and spent no time with him before giving him the test to build a rapport with him. He was very sick 2 weeks prior to the test with a virus that took us all a few weeks to completely get over (very high fevers and fatigue and body aches that lasted 2 weeks) so I really don't know if that could affect him at all either. He is very tentative when meeting new people as well and the fact that she took no extra time with him before giving him the test just bothers me.

Both my husband and I are gifted and we think my husband may have had ADHD as a child just from how his mother described him and how he is now but he was never tested. We are now wondering if our son could be ADHD and possibly have a higher IQ than what he tested. Is this possible? I don't care if he is gifted or not for bragging rights. We need help with his behavior and getting his interest back in school. He does not like reading...he says it is boring. He loves math and science. We found an aritcle by Dr. Deirdre Lovecky (the article was on gifted & adhd children and it was like reading about my son and all the issues we have with him) and I just got her book called Differnt Minds to see if that will give us some insight.

We need to find a psychologist who will listen and help us. My son goes to a private school and getting them to help us challenge him and also help him in areas he lags will be way easier if we have a proper diagnosis. Is there a good resource on finding a psychologist knowledgeable in this field by chance? We are in Florida. Any help or insights are greatly appreciated!

Thanks!
Stacy
Mom to 2 boys: E (6 1/2 years old) & T (4 1/2 years old)

Unfortunately, you won't be able to retest him with the WISC-IV for at least a year. I would look for a psychologist who is familiar with gifted kids and with 2e kids, and who uses the SB-V. It sounds like the one you used missed some major red flags (perfectionism in particular), and generally didn't do a good job of putting him at ease with the testing. If he has that much scatter in his subscores, the overall score may not be valid at all.

Hoagie's Gifted has a list of testers here: http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/psychologists.htm There are two listed in Florida, for what that's worth. You could also post over in the "regional" section of the board asking for a recommendation.

I will warn you that you will probably get what you pay for. The neuropsych who tested our daughter did a great job, and easily identified the diagnoses of dysgraphia and SPD (she doesn't think she has ADHD, because most of the behaviors can be explained by those two). It also cost $2500. If money is tight, you may want to look at a psychology school, where you might be able to get a cheaper test done by a student (supervised by a licensed practitioner). But you would be best off finding a neuropsych with expertise with "twice exceptional" kids.

Thank you for the reply. I had been looking at the SB-V as an option. Money is tight just b/c we send our kids to a private school but my husband and I are committed to doing what we need to do to help our son. He is a great kid and we want him to succeed. Right now he can cope fairly well but we don't forsee that lasting much longer. Was shocked to see the math he is capable of doing isn't learned until the end of his 2nd grade year. By then he will be well beyond that if he keeps asking us to show him different things. Will post on the regional board and see what people say. The closest one to us on the list you posted doesn't do testing of course. The next closest is about 4 hours away. My fear is getting in with someone like you had costing up $2500 and our son digging his heels in and saying he won't do it. He can be quite strong willed. The good thing is he really enjoyed taking the IQ test (he said it was easy...probably was...he just wasn't fast enough) so that may help motivate him to do it again. Thanks again for your help!

Stacy, if you're comfortable with doing so, you could post the subtest scores from the WISC here and you might get some useful advice - quite a few of our 2e kids have wildly varying subtest scores. With the WISC, there is an option to calculate a "GAI" (Global Ability Index) in place of the FSIQ - GAI leaves out the processing speed and working memory subtests.

Another idea re reading is - since he says it's boring, do you know what reading comprehension level he tests at? Most schools, even private schools, have some type of reading evaluation for grades K-2 that they could administer to determine what level he's reading at. I think that would be really important to know, because a young child can be "bored" with reading for different reasons - it could be that he's bored because the books he's given to read are too easy for him (not enough challenging words) or too easy for him (not enough content depth) or maybe he's not actually reading at the level of the book so it's too challenging or maybe he just doesn't want to sit still and read or maybe his eyes jump around or maybe the books are about rocks and he wants to read about fish. What's your gut feeling from knowing him - do you think the content needs to be deeper and more challenging?

Another idea - you can ask your public school district to evaluate him even if he's in a private school.

I gotta run kinda mid-thought - I'm sorry! I'll be back

polarbear

Will post his scores below. Any help would be appreciated.

As for reading I'm not real sure what is going on. My gut says he can read better than what he is letting on b/c there are times he just ups and reads things he sees in the store without any effort yet at home it is like pulling teeth to get him to sound out words. He thinks he can't read things that are hard and if he thinks he can't do it well he prefers not to do it at all. By the end of kindergarten he was reading simple books very well (level 1 & 2 readers) but now at the beginning of 1st grade it is like reteaching him the basics all over again. When reading with him in kindergarten his comprehension was great but now it seems to have lagged a little. I had the chance to be a long term sub in his room last year and got to see him compared the other students. He was one of the best readers and comprehended more than most the other kids when he read. I noticed it took him a long time to do his work even though it was work he knew how to do. He got the best grades in his class yet he was almost always last to turn in his work. He will read for reward and loves it if I can make sight words into a game or competition. His school should be doing testing to see where the kids are very soon. They test 3 times a year...beginning, middle, and end of year.

Okay...here are the test scores. Factors I feel may have skewed them are: tester (built no rapport with him, spent only 45 minutes with him), very timid in new situations, possible ADHD, takes forever to answer questions even though he knows the right answer (perfectionist), time of day (right at noon...he is best in the morning), taken at end of summer with very little intellectual stuff going on (my fault), and just recovered from nasty virus.

Verbal Comprehension Subtests:
Similarities- Raw Score 12, Scaled Score 11, Percentile 75th
Vocabulary- Raw Score 19, Scaled Score 11, Percentile 63rd
Comprehension- Raw Score 10, Scaled 9, Percentile 37th
Perceptual Reasoning Subtests:
Block Design-Raw 22, Scaled 13, Percentile 84th
Picture Concepts-Raw 9, Scaled 9, Percentile 37th
Matrix Reasoning-Raw 18, Scaled 15, Percentile 95th
Working Memory Subtests:
Digit Span-Raw 12, Scaled-11, Percentile 63rd
Letter-Number Sequencing-Raw 9, Scaled 10, Percentile 50th
Processing Speed Subtests:
Coding-Raw 17, Scaled 5, Percentile 5th
Symbol Search-Raw 21, Scaled 11, Percentile 63rd

Composit Scores:
VCI-Scaled 32, Composite 102, Percentile Rank 55th,
PRI-Scaled 37, composite 115, Percentile rank 84th
WMI-Scaled 21, Composite 102, Percentile rank 55th
PSI-Scaled 16, Composite 88, Percentile rank 21st
FSIQ-Scaled 106, Composite 105, Percentile rank 63rd

Any help is great!
Thanks!
Stacy

Responding via ipad so my typing is limited.

What stands out for me is the very low coding score in comparison to the rest of his subtests, especially when you mentioned he takes a long time to do his work.

45 minutes? That seems super fast. When my DS was tested at the beginning of this summer he was there for 3 hours. We started with me in the room helping him feel comfortable. They took breaks to play games etc. The psych met with me before testing for an hour & I had a stack of evals to fill out so she could get the whole picture.
Did the tester have experience with gifted & more importantly 2E? If I've learned one important thing from this board it is that the tester needs to be qualified to recognize how to work with a gifted child.
Good luck on this journey -- keep following his lead & encouraging him to never stop questioning.

Same thoughts here. Especially your description of your ds knowing the answers but taking a long time to do his work - this is soooo very much like our ds in early elementary, and he also had a significantly lower coding score than his other subtest scores. The first time he was tested in early early elementary he was being tested for a gifted program and the psych who administered the IQ test said exactly what your psych said "he got every answer correct, just moved very slowly." The psych attributed that to him being young and not really understanding or caring that on this particular subtest speed mattered. My dh and I, when we saw how slow he was to produce written work and heard similar feedback from his teachers chalked it up to perfectionism because he seemed so obviously intellectually gifted when he talked. Each of us, parents, teachers, and that psych all missed a very big clue - that low coding score wasn't perfectionism, it was a sign of an LD (dyspraxia and dysgraphia for our ds). Not all low coding scores mean an LD - it could be anything from not caring to being tired of taking a test to worrying to who knows what - but fwiw, I'd think it's worth checking into a bit further with the types of follow-up assessments a neuropsych would offer - tests that assess executive function, fine motor skills and visual-motor processing. If you hadn't mentioned it taking your ds a long time to get his work done I might be more likely to guess the low coding score was just random.

At the very least, I don't think the FSIQ is a valid measure with the difference in processing speed you've noted, and you should be able to ask the psych who administered the test to calculate GAI for your ds. There are folks here who might be able to calculate it for you - I'm not one of them

FWIW, you have teachers and others who think your ds is gifted - don't change your expectations or lessen the challenge you feel he needs in school based on this one assessment. It's one data point, one measure of ability taken at one moment in time. It might be a good measure of his ability or it might be off - but in either case, ultimately it's achievement that matters in school

Have you had your ds evaluated for ADHD? Are there reasons you suspect it other than the slow response on work tasks at school? I think that would be worth following up on too, although I'd probably first try to rule out potential issues causing the low coding score.

polarbear

ps - even though you're in private school you could request testing through your school district, sighting the concern with slow output. Whether or not the school district would be willing to test depends on your district, but it might be one way to get further testing at no cost to understand what the low coding score means.

Echoing what Polarbear said, your public school district may even be required to test your son even though he is in private school. I'm not sure about laws where you live, but in our district they must do the testing. You pay the same taxes as everyone else, even though you aren't using the public school.

A couple thoughts here:

The WISC should take about an hour to administer omitting breaks, etc. so 45 mins is fast but not outrageously fast especially if one is dealing with a child who truly is average and, thus, not being asked all of the questions b/c s/he hits discontinue guidelines reasonably soon into each test.

Secondly, the GAI, which someone else mentioned as an alternate IQ score when either the PSI or WMI is significantly lower than VCI or PRI, would be higher, but not dramatically so. His GAI would come out at 108/70th percentile.

In general, "average" children with average scores tend to have most of their scores clustering between 8 to 12. Scores in the 15 range, like your ds' matrix reasoning score, are generally considered MG (moderately gifted, in case I'm throwing in too much board lingo w/out defining !) I'd say, for the most part, that psychometrically speaking, a child isn't considered MG, though, w/out at least one index (usually the VCI or PRI) as a whole coming out in the mid to upper 90s area (upper 120s to 130s or so) not just one part of one index. That isn't to say that this might not have been the best day or test for your ds and the scores may still be a poor indicator of his ability.

FWIW, I'm not seeing anything in there that stands out as 2e on face value other than possibly the low coding score. I'm curious whether the other poster (polarbear?) with the dyspraxic child found that it impacted symbol search and block design as well. I'd guess that it would which is why I'd be less likely to go to 2e, but I could be wrong. Polarbear??

While I do agree that having a tester with familiarity with 2e-ness or giftedness in general is a good thing when dealing with a gifted child, my one 2e kid has been tested twice, neither time by a tester with any experience with 2e or gifted (once with a doctoral student with almost no testing experience at all) and, while her scores were seriously erratic btwn the two testings, there was clear indication both times that she was gifted and that there was major scatter/something else going on both times. The testers didn't recognize that there was an issue (lack of experience came into play here when scores ranging from 8-19 meant nothing to them), but to someone with some idea of what gifted and 2e looked like, there were clear warning signs.

After that long ramble, my point on the last paragraph is that I would not assume that he has a learning disability just b/c the scores were lower than expected. 2e usually presents with more significant scatter than overall depressed numbers.