Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment WPPSI-IV Renorming Question

My 4 year old son participated in the WPPSI-IV re-norming and I am somewhat perplexed by the results. He was chosen because of his advanced milestones (reading and using our computer independently at 20 months) and the fact that he is working at a 2nd to 3rd grade level academically and is still in preschool. He has taught himself most of these things on his own because of an obsession with reading and math. Well the scores came back and his overall score was 129 which is one point below the gifted level. Most subareas were in the mid 120s with Working Memory being being 150 and Processing speed being 106. It is silly because my son is obviously gifted so does the fact that he scored so low show that he is 2e? Or is this not a good indicator of giftedness at such a young age? The letter we received in the mail did say that overall the re-norming scores came in lower than expected. I'm wondering if this could be due to changes that were made to the test for re-norming. This is our first experience with testing and I'm just trying to figure our little guy out. Thanks.

I rarely post on here, but I just had to respond to your post. I just got the scores from my two children who participated in the same study. Both scores were much lower than I expected, with my now 6 year old's scores being almost absurdly low (he didn't test in the gifted range either). Similarly to your son, he's shown extremely advanced abilities from a young age (he taught himself to read at 2 years old, currently reads around a 6th grade level, is working several years ahead in math, etc). It was our first experience with testing too. The only thing I can think is that 1) the test took over 3 hours for him to complete (the tester ran out of questions to ask him on every sub-test) and 2) he's a relatively shy child who takes a while to warm up in new situations, so maybe those things played a role? I'm at a bit of a loss myself, but I just wanted to let you know that you weren't alone.

Did you see the note at the bottom of the page that many of the scores were lower than expected and they're still working on the extended norms? So, I wonder if it was the test and not our kids, kwim? I would love to hear how the scores from the study compared to the scores of children who had been previously tested.

It might be that your son is more of a high achiever type than you think; high achievement at a young age doesn't prove a child is gifted, just tends to support that hypothesis. Still, a 129 full scale IQ is really still on the low end of gifted, not just bright. In addition, the extremely high working memory could explain how he is able to learn quickly, and would probably give a boost to just about any cognitive task. In other words the scores might be pretty accurate and still point to someone with very unusual thinking ability, but still not perfectly agree with your preconceived notions about your son.

It might also be that he just tested poorly for some reason-- bellyache, bad rapport with the tester, unfamiliar experience leading to anxiety, learning disabilities, etc. The chance of a generally bad test day might be less due to high scores on some of the subtests-- if he had poor rapport with the tester or high anxiety, for example, maybe his working memory wouldn't have tested so high. Do you have other test results that would tend to show that these are inaccurate?

Thanks for your post. It is nice to know we are not alone! I figured there must have been lots of ridiculously low scores for them to put the disclaimer in the letter. My son also tested for over 3 hours but said it was easy. If the test has gone from HG+ kids easily maxing it out to not even registering as gifted, they need to go back to the drawing board. Maybe that is what caused the delay in getting the results out.

I know of a few other people whose kids took the test and will report back if they have the same experience. Some of the kids have been tested before.

This is interesting - will be interesting to see what else comes out re the renorming.

FWIW, it doesn't make sense to me that if the tester ran out of questions on each subtest that the scores were only in the 120s... wouldn't running out of questions indicate hitting ceilings?

polarbear

eta - I don't think it's entirely out of the range of probability that the scores are correct - we have friends who have a very high-achieving dd (grade accelerated, gifted programs, very early reader, etc) who wasn't IQ tested until she'd already been in school several years (and was older). Her IQ is around 120.. which most here wouldn't even think of as gifted - but she's amazingly successful at achieving in school. The IQ number is only one part of the equation. In my family, my EG kiddo isn't the highest achiever, but my HG+ dd has one of those out-of-the-field high working memory scores, and she soars when it comes to schoolwork and moving through new concepts quickly which is, I think, due in large part to her working memory (all of her subtest scores are very strong, but her WM is still much higher). My EG kiddo, otoh, has lower WM than his PRI/VIQ and you can see that in him - he's an amazing thinker, but not a producer of huge amounts of work in a short period of time and on the surface, when you're just looking at academic tasks he doesn't appear to be all that out there. Talk to him and you see the high IQ.

Sounds to me that those scores are off. I don't believe a kid who can read at age 2 is just a high achiever. My son is DYS and way above the DYS IQ cutoff and he didn't read until 2 1/2, to put help put your son in perspective. He also was doing 2nd-3rd grade work in preschool. So your son sounds similar to my PG son. I think you should wait a couple years and have him tested with the WISC or something that's not in the process of being renormed. If I were you I would completely ignore those results.

The ceiling thing is one of the main reasons why I was so surprised by my child's scores. The tester said that my son hit the ceilings in every subtest (I know he missed some along the way, but never enough for her to stop move on before running out of questions). Plus, the tester mentioned afterward that, in her experience, my son is easily highly gifted, if not exceptionally. So, his low scores really don't make sense to me. Also, my son's scores were actually extremely low in the processing speed and working memory sections (high 80's), so even the explanation that he's just a high achiever doesn't really add up. I don't want to hijack the OP's thread, but there's a lot that doesn't add up for me with the scores. It's just really hard for me not to completely dismiss the scores as flat out wrong. We'll likely test again with the WISC once the twelve month window has passed and see how those scores come out.

I don't think that early reading milestones can be reliably mapped to IQ. I also think that high working memory could well be an aid in learning to read.

I wouldn't completely ignore them. There's no way to fake a high working memory, for instance. The presence of high scores also means that there was likely not a rapport or anxiety problem in general for the test. Perhaps there was an attention span problem, since the test ran long-- but overall I don't see why one would completely disregard the results, just because they are different from expected. That's why people test, to weed out the subjective.

I'm surprised they report any scores before they've completed the study. I would also expect them to be doing correlational tests like SB-V for validating their extended norms.

A Google search, which brings up Davidson articles among others, shows that the two are linked. It's the other way that's not linked-- reading later doesn't mean a kid isn't gifted. Further, the earlier they spontaneously read (teach themselves), the higher their IQ.

Because there are so many variables that go into testing, if a test seems completely off, I think it probably is. My 2E/HG son has one really wonky test in his file. While he's generally 97th-98th, on one test, he was in the 20th. If that had been his first test, I think we would have been just as confused as the OP.

My other children were identified as gifted/highly gifted once starting school but never displayed any advanced milestones. My youngest is very, very different. When I fist saw the things he was doing around 2 years old it was shocking to me. I think that is what is so confusing about all of this. Out of all my kids he is the only one at this point needing special accommodations.

The criteria required to participate in the WPPSI study was to have kids with previous test scores or milestones that showed HG+. It seems there would be a problem with the re-norming if these kids were showing up as not gifted at all under the new guidelines.

Who knows though. My son may not be a good test taker. I will probably wait a few years and have him take the WISC-IV. These tests are not too important except that they are required to get access to so many gifted services.

I've never posted here before but I just had to reassure the original poster that she is not alone. My sons also participated in the WPSSI IV norming study last spring and their scores are so bad they are laughable. My oldest, who was 7.3 years old when he took the test, received a FSIQ of 118 and my youngest who was 4.75 years old received a FSIQ of 126.

My oldest has qualified as HGT in the Denver Public Schools. His Raven's and CogAT scores were very high (99.9% and 97%). He's been accelerated 2 grades in math and 1 grade in all other subjects at an immersion school....and he's still bored. My youngest spent 2 years in a gifted preschool and just took the CogAT yesterday. I don't know how off his scores are but I'm sure they are still quite low.

I'm not sure what to think about these numbers...but I'm ignoring them for now. The letter we received seem to question the validity of the results. I plan to get them retested using the WSIC soon.

Thank you all. I don't feel crazy anymore!

The confidence interval for a FSIQ is going to cross over the 130 mark so that your child's true score is likely to fall within a range of scores around the 129 score. WPPSI-III norms, for example (that's all I have to refer to) set the 95% CI at 122-133 around a score of 129. So I'm saying the reported score is not really your child's true score necessarily, the error variance within the test means that FSIQ can only ever be an estimate.

No. You cannot infer even a ballpark IQ from any reading milestone. If you think you can, please point to some research support; I'm eager to learn. Anecdata from the likes of Ruf's Levels are not adequate support; I am looking for some reliable way to convert an actual reading milestone to an actual IQ number.

I don't understand your hostility regarding this issue. I'm not going to engage you in some kind of research fight. How silly.

I'm not being hostile. You suggested to the OP that her child has a higher IQ than your son's, based on a reading milestone, and you did so without a solid basis. What's the point of giving false advice?

I tend to agree with Lucounu on the early reading and IQ. I have kids with scores 2 points difference and 3 year difference in when they began reading. One of my friends had her child tested last year at 9yrs old for the gifted program. The child read very early like one of my kids. The score came back high average and -2SD from my later reader. She was shocked and the school retested on a difference test and got the same result. Her child is a bright kid and clearly a high achiever, but not quite in the gifted range. The child spontaneously started reading before preschool.

I would not every get crazy over one test, but I also would not assume early reading is a sure sign of Giftedness. My later reader looked maybe high average in class in kindergarten at best if you just looked at reading. My early reader was so far ahead the school stop measuring at +5yrs in reading at our kindergarten assessment. The Ruff guidelines looked nothing like my DYS kiddo. I just think early mile stones need to be taken with a grain salt. Kids develop at different times and areas. My most athletic kid was so slow in sitting, crawling, rolling over we thought something was wrong. Then in 6 to 8 weeks went from laying on the floor like a bean bag to walking. I'm sure glad I didn't go crazy meeting with doctors over the "delayed" development.

If you only have a test that was in the testing phase, I wouldn't change anything your doing over that. I certainly would not jump into questioning 2E absent of any other indicators of 2E. I think I recall when the Wisc was normed the 130 kids came in around 123 or 124. It can take a little while to iron out these test. Retest in a couple of years, if you feel its needed. I see it as one test on one day. Even when test are well established and out for a while, I personally think at times people put to much weight into a test. If a kid scores super high but no interest in achievement, what does the high IQ really mean? Same goes with the high achiever with a average IQ, doesn't that kid usually do just fine in the end anyway? You see what your child needs are and keep plugging away at that. It's just a test. I always tell people they are the same kid from the day before the test good or bad results.

I don't have the studies to cite, but I have the sense that both Iucounu and syoblrig are sort of right. I've never seen anything linking age of reading to specific scores, certainly (as in, reading before 3 = IQ over 140 or something like that). However, I feel like I've seen it stated many times that there is a pretty strong correlation between self-taught reading before age 5 and giftedness, with earlier reading being linked to more profound giftedness. I don't think it's just Ruf, whom I agree is suspect.

What's actually being argued about here? I'm confused. Two things seem likely to be uncontroversial:

- age of [self-taught*] reading is negatively correlated with IQ (earlier age, higher IQ, *on average*)

- the absolute value of the correlation coefficient is likely to be quite small.

If there is a correlation, it's possible to use one thing to predict the other; that's what correlation means. If it's quite small, one's predictions using this method will not be very accurate.

So...? This thread is about the size of r, or...?

* Without "self-taught" the correlation will surely still be there - because we have no reason to think the taught readers will correlate in the opposite direction from the self-taught ones, and the latter are still there - but the size of the correlation coefficient will be even smaller. We know it's possible to teach almost any baby to read; Glenn Doman made a fortune out of this observation.

There's a decent reference to a variety of studies on this in the Small Poppies article:

http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10124.aspx

I think I agreed with Lucounco. I just don't believe it's a reliable indicator alone. I have seen early self taught readers score very average scores and the reverse of that. My kids were a self taught 2 yr old reader and 5 yr old could take it or leave it with reading. Both are PG kids. It could a good Indictator with one kid and not another. Which in my mind makes it unreliable.

Our school has a decent gifted program doesn't give a lot of weight to early testing or early reading. I tend to agree with them. My DYS kiddo had a lot of peers reading and doing above grade level math in kindergarten. Eight years later my DYS is many years ahead of them in every subject. These kids are doing fine, they just seem to be more early bloomers than gifted. I would not discount it as a possible sign just not a given. I probably watch the speed of acquisition and depth of understanding as more significant to me than age based milestones. It's just an opinion and I am always open to my opinions not being shared or necessarily correct.

going back to the original post. I think the issue with the results of this test is that it was a study...one in which the kids took ALL possible subtests. It took my oldest 2.5 hours and my youngest 3.5+ hours to complete it so I'm sure they were very tired.

Pearson is still in the process of norming it so who knows what they are using to come up with their results.

Another issue is, from what I understand, the WPPSI isn't a good test for older kids...yet, Pearson wants to norm it for kids up to 7.3 which is why my oldest participated in the study. His results were laughable.

The WPPSI-IV is very different from the WPPSI-III so who knows how comfortable the testers were in giving it.

Above all the letter we got from the GDC questioned the validity....not just on my kids' results but of all the results they got. Remember, the kids had to qualify to participate in this study....

I would not look to these results as the final word on your child's giftedness. I took my a bit to realize that myself. It was a tough weekend...but in the end the results are just too weird.

I guess I would also say that there's reading and there's READING. Some folks are like "OMG! My entering kindergartener can read!", and the child can, but it's Starfall level, Biscuit, perhaps Frog and Toad. This is really different from a child who is reading Harry Potter at 4, obviously. (Note--my kids aren't/weren't reading HP at 4.) It does also seem important and relevant to take exposure into consideration. Don't most Montessori kids have some level of reading mastery by 5?

FWIW, my DD12 would be considered a "late reader" (5 years old) in this crowd. DD is a strong math kid. When she was in sixth grade, her gt teacher asked what age all the kids had learned how to read. DD was the latest reader in the class but she is easily one the top performing kids in her GT classroom with the highest Explore composite score in her class (it was DYS level). I have no idea how everyone's IQs compare. Maybe there is a stronger correlation between high VCI and early reading than there is if your kid is stronger on the PRI?

ds is also a late reader by this boards standards. He was 5yrs 3 months when reading "Bob" books. He started kinder at a level 'd' and now in first grade is at a level 'o'. His PRI is 11 points higher then his VCI. He is a mathy kid as well.

Spontaneous reading, while not some sort of prerequisite for giftedness, *is* a strong indicator of giftedness if occurring before age 2. Spontaneous meaning, no parental assistance, and no sort of "Your Baby Can Read" type of program .

I'm still waiting for our results. My son participated in the WPPSI-IV norming data the day after his 6th birthday. The year before, he was tested on the SB-V and the WJ-III achievement test. He qualified for the Davidson Young Scholar's program on his achievement, but only scored highly gifted, overall, on the SB-V. He hit a couple ceilings, but not in one of the top 3 categories to qualify for DYS. I was hoping that this norming data would help us build his portfolio for DYS, as his two siblings are in the program already. Needless to say, I am not happy with what is being reported here . Of my three, I believe, with absolute certainty, that this child is the smartest of the bunch, but immature, with focus and confidence issues. These aren't good traits for test taking. Looks like I'm going to have to pay for the WISC-IV, which I didn't want to have to do. Between the 3 of them, I've already spent more than $3,000 on testing!

My oldest son, just turned 12 and a high school student, taught himself to read at 18 mos. old. By the time he was 3, he was independently reading "The Chronicles of Narnia" with perfect comprehension, writing sentences, and making up multiplication and division problems with his matchbox cars. He squeaked by on his IQ test, qualifying for DYS with his verbal score. He blew his achievement test out of the water in every way.

My 6 year old son is working anywhere from a 4th-8th grade level, but by age, should be in 1st grade. He began reading at 9 months old. He began speaking at 5 WEEKS old. Yes, I have this on video. THIS is the child I'm having testing issues with! As I stated, he qualifies for DYS with his achievement testing, but falls short on his IQ test.

My 5 year old daughter didn't do anything impressive and early like her big brothers did. When I had her tested less than a week before her 4th birthday, the results shocked me. She squeaked by on her achievement test, qualifying for DYS with her math score. But she blew her IQ test out of the water. The WPPSI-III only goes as high as 155; she scored a 152, meaning she hit A LOT of ceilings! She was hardly reading at the time.

So yeah, reading can be an indicator, but just because your child doesn't read early doesn't mean they aren't gifted . . . or even profoundly gifted!

The reading onset/IQ correlation question really is an interesting one. I've always wondered about it. FWIW, I was the last kid in my class to learn to read (1st grade) and had won a District-wide reading contest by 2nd grade. I'm not "mathy" and my giftedness is definitely verbal-linguistic. I have a PG IQ.

Like someone said, there is reading, and then READING. DS5, PG, was a self taught reader at age 2.8 yrs. And shortly after, by 3 he was reading full on chapter book type stuff.

DS2.11 "reads" level one type stuff and has been for a couple of months now. Still, no comparison to what DS5 was doing at this point.

So I guess for DS5 early READING was a sign of him being PG but DS2.11 is not showing the same strong signs. This is where this comment that was posted hits home.

"I probably watch the speed of acquisition and depth of understanding as more significant to me than age based milestones."

This is what makes me think DS2.11 is way up there in giftedness as well. DS5 didn't have the same acquisition and depth of understanding that DS2.11 when he was this age. Completely different types of intelligence.

I have come to believe testing young children is ridiculous. There is a reason many professionals do not recommend IQ testing for children under the age of seven.

I used to live in a city where everyone who is anyone tested their three and four year olds for admission to private school. It was a scam. Testing was expensive. There were testers who were known to give better scores than others. Parents passed around test prep. The expensive preschools touted curriculums designed to prepare your kid for the WPPSI. There was just a lot of money involved. And, there were supposedly a lot of 99 percentile kids.

I now live in a city where the public school will test three and four year olds for free. I talked to the psychologist about testing a very shy child last year. He said not to bother. He was very candid. He said the three and four year olds who do well on their testing are the outgoing, confidant children who come from enriched homes. I basically learned that the gifted magnet school was a way to keep UMC families in the poor performing district from flocking to privates. The school operates one grade level ahead and does not serve the highly gifted child. There is another program for that. Surprise, surprise--they do not accept testing done before the age of seven.

It is about money. It is about politics. But, I think in the end it is hurting the kids.

looking at my two kids and how different they are while I'm pretty sure they are gifted, I honestly believe that unless there's an LD involved, the age at which these children learn to read depends largely on their INTEREST. My older one is clearly a math / sciency kinda guy while my younger one was fascinated by letters before he could talk. While the 2.5 year old is learning to read, the 4 year old has very little interest. Yet I am pretty sure if he wanted to, he'd be easily capable of it. But it's the last thing on his radar.

as for the original topic, I don't have much experience with testing just yet, but I wouldn't go by the numbers unless they are made official. If the test is still being worked on, I would go with whatever other test results I have ... and with my own gut feeling of where I see my child fit on the scale.

This concept of self taught has confused me from the beginning. For example my toddler has read three sight words before I taught her any phonics. She is not self taught. She has a rich environment. A lady with four children was once arguing that her baby was self taught and that she did not provide a rich environment. Hello. Older siblings is an enriched environment automatically. Daycare is an enriched environment. Sunday school is an enriched environment. Cable television is an enriched environment.

Some kids have a hard time learning at an older age with the same exact teaching supplements. Some people learn quicker with less effort. I've seen it argued that gifted kids still put in the effort to learn these things, even if it was earlier or easier. The arguement was in response to, "Gifted kids aren't the good students the students who work hard to learn are the good students."

Which makes me ask, if they learn with less time or effort than other children then I guess you could say they're a quick learner. Should you teach a quick learner more? If so, what? If so, what is the practical difference between quick learner, high achiever, and gifted student? And don't tell me because they feel and think things more deeply. I mean if you have any one of these as a young'un shouldn't you teach them more stuff more deeply, or more simply said just teach them more? If your child is reading at any age, don't hold them back. Provide scaffolding so they can master more skills at an appropriate to them pace. Too bad it's tricky to balance this with learning to navigate the educational offerings available. They wouldn't spend so much on test prep and testing if they (the other they) would just offer a more good education for whoever wants to take it.

I think my 2.5 year old is a good example of "self-taught" ... I have never once in my life read him a book. From when he was a baby, he had zero interest in anyone reading to him. Even now, he won't pay any attention to it. When he was about 18 months, he really got into watching Leapfrog videos and Super Why show, suddenly started recognizing all lower and upper case letters and phonic sounds and couple months later started reading words. With zero help from me, other than occasionally telling him what letter he had when he came to me with a plastic letter block in hand. He loves Vtech V.Reader books and Leappad ebooks and has now started reading parts of sentences in his regular paper books. Again without any help from or anyone else. So I do believe he is / will be self-taught.

Well, received our results. Yeah, I think there are some problems with this new test.

We didn't take our son to an amateur last year. We took him to Dr. Ed Amend, someone well-aquainted with gifted/PG children, and who has spoken at DYS Summits in the past. I'm no expert, but I'll give you a few examples of just how off these results are compared to last year's SB-V results:

1) Verbal: Difference of 11 points.
2) Visual Spatial: Difference of 29 points.
3) Fluid Reasoning: Difference of 27 points. On the SB-V, our 6 yo hit the ceiling of the test. This score on the WPPSI-IV norming test wasn't even a gifted score.
4) Full Scale IQ: Difference of 12+ points.
5) On the SB-V, 7 of 9 scores were in the moderately-profoundly range, on the WPPSI-IV norming data, NONE were.

This seems a tad problematic and off, no?

That's a really good point.

Test preparation. Any child who is coached on general knowledge/content/format/scoring principles will obtain an invalid score.

Any score on a standardised test is only valid if the test-taker, the test administrator, and the protocol are the same as that used in the standardisation sample.

Preparing children for IQ tests = invalid index scores.

You may as well send yourself a letter saying, "Your child is gifted" as trust in the index score of a child who was prepared for the test.

Mk13, Superwhy is designed to explicitly teach children to read. A child who learns things watching the show is being taught them by the show. I don't know anything about leapfrog, but I suspect it's not dissimilar.

So much of what's around for small children is designed to teach them to read, though, that I'm not sure it's useful to say that a child who has been exposed to any of it cannot be called self-taught. Mine used to like starfall.com as a toddler, and I let him play with it sometimes; it was one of a handful of sites and DVDs that I used to put him in front of when I needed a few minutes' peace (and the only one that taught reading, that I remember). He had alphabet books, too, and picture books with only a few words on each page that people used to read to him, and there were letter posters on the wall at the nursery he went to; it was probably all useful information to the toddler cracking the code! I describe him as self-taught because no person ever intended that he should learn to read (I had positively decided that it would be better if he did not learn to read until he went to school - but I didn't go so far as to ban this stuff!). He'd have been more self-taught if he'd lived without internet and with no written material below the level of The Times, but not many children do!

I think calling my DS a self-taught reader is still making a somewhat useful distinction between him and a child whose parent did daily flashcards with them from birth, because a very small percentage of children exposed to the material my DS got read at 2 while a very high percentage of children deliberately taught by their parents to read do so; "my child taught himself to read" is information about the child while "I taught my child to read" is information about the parent! Given the huge grey area (just how available were these resources, who made the choices between this TV programme or website or book and another, what was the parents' reaction to any signs of interest in them from the child?) though, it's true that it's not all that useful as a distinction for purposes of gauging anything about the child. The main use of calling DS "self-taught" to me is heading off people who would otherwise use the fact that he could read well before starting school as proof positive that I was a horribly pushy parent. I used it on school application forms to what seemed to be good effect.

Yes, ITA with ColinsMum. It's pretty difficult for a child to be entirely self-taught these days--as in, never exposed to any reading toys, reading programs or anything intended to semi-teach or enourage reading, although parents religiously following a Waldorf program may pull it off. (Many of the kids I know who did Waldorf did not know the alphabet at age 6. It's been interesting to watch their trajectories, as some have ended up transferring to publics. Some have done completely fine. A not insignificant number are now below grade level by conventional standards, although they listen to and comprehend books well above grade level. We'll see how it shakes out in the end.)

I did actually spend a bit of time trying to teach my DD to read at age 3, because she asked. However, we gave it up quickly because it wasn't clicking. If we had kept pursuing and it had worked, I woudl have said I taught her to read. I suppose maybe it helped and I just don't know it.

DS did not ask and learned without help, but he did watch Super Why--along with a bunch of other TV programs. I don't know. Maybe it helped. He was much more phonetic than DD.

I know people who sit down with BOB books every day and reward their kids when they are able to make it through each one, or who work through that Ordinary Parents' Guide to Teaching Reading, or who do sight word cards or daily read-aloud sessions with the intent to instruct, using leveled books and working to move the child ahead. That's what I would call teaching reading. It IS a bit gray, though. But over here, DS was reading haltingly out of easy books and we were like "Cool!" and then a couple of months later he was reading fluently out of much harder books. We didn't do anything to help him in the meantime. That's pretty self-taught, IMO.

I think anyone that exposes their child to 'reading style' computer programs in contributing to their reading. Yet, I think you would need to have. Pretty bright child for them to have the capacity to view and transfer this information into reading. So I don't think it says much about how taught they are. Teaching is not a bad thing if done in the correct way.

We are not a hardcore Waldorf family or anything of the sort as implied above but we have not introduced TV to our 4 year old, or computer or iPad etc nor have we ever owned reading programs.

I simply read to him a variety of different types of books since birth, for pleasure and at 3 he began reading. And by reading I mean confidently reading any text presented. Having the capacity to sound out and understand phonics and sight words.

So it very much is possible to have a truly self taught reader these days but I think the difference between self taught or taught reader at that age does not matter very much. A child who is gifted has the capacity to comprehend what they are reading beyond age similar peers etc.

Yes and no. The SB tests and the Weschler tests often don't come out super close although they have some degree of correlation. A difference of 12 pts on the FSIQ isn't out of the range of expected btwn these two different tests. One may have hit more on his strengths and the other on weaker areas. Also, newer tests usually do come in a bit lower either way.

On average, the correlation between the SB and Weschler scales usually runs around .7, with some of the subtests having much lower correlations btwn the different tests, which easily allows for the composite and subtest scores to come out quite a few points apart. When they last compared the two, as far as I know, the WPPSI-R and SB-IV only had a .54 correlation btwn the PIQ on the WPPSI and the Visual Spatial index on the SB.