Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Incongruous test results. Please fill in gaps.

A couple of weeks ago our 7yo son took the WISC-IV and WJ-III(Ach) tests. Later we recieved some results by phone and after that got a brief written report (with no subtest scores).

After the testing I asked the psychologist if he had "hit the ceiling"* on any subtests, and she answered "yes, 2 or 3". In the phone call I asked what subtests did he "hit the ceiling on" and she said "Vocabulary and Similarities". But when we got the brief written report the percentile for VCI was only 92.

So given only this information, (which is all we have on VCI) can someone deduce the scores on the 3 VCI subtests
Vocabulary
Similarities
Comprehension

We have requested more detailed information, including subtest scores, but we don't yet know if we'll get it. [Edit to add, it looks like they won't tell us the subtest scores.] Perhaps someone here can fill in the gaps, and suggest if this makes sense.


* By "hit the ceiling" I mean ran out of questions without reaching the termination criteria (getting too many questions wrong)for that subtest.

Thanks! That's great information!

I think "ceiling" definitely meant getting to the end of all the available questions without previously having been terminated due to a string of bad answers. Given this, are you saying that a child can get a scaled score of 17 or 16 (or less?) despite getting to the end of all the available questions, if they have enough 1s and 0s amongst the 2s? (FWIW he just turned 7.)

If I'm thinking wishfully, I'd wonder if maybe the tester thought 19+19+13=41. Is that also plausible? Should I ask them to check?

It's a pity they don't give more detailed information, as it would be valuable, and I wouldn't be having to speculate. (The testers said they are just certifying our son meets the criteria for gifted (>=2SD), and aren't being asked to go into details.) But I'd like to know what the details are and what they mean.

For example, what would VCI scaled scores of 17/16/8 imply about a child, given that the 1st 2 subtests (Voc and Sim) went through all the questions while Comp is 3SD lower?

I'm not sure about posting all this information, but I'm curious what else can be deduced from what information is available. For WISC-IV we only got percentiles (and nothing on individual subtests).

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What can be deduced from these numbers about the Standard Score and Sum of Scaled Scores in each category? I understand that in some cases the available information could only yield a range of possible values.

For WJ-III we got Standard Scores.

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What, if anything, should we make of such a combination of high and low scores?

Is anyone able to fill in the missing Standard Scores and Sums of Scaled Scores based on the WISC-IV percentiles?

Also, what should we read into such a mix of high and low scores?

I can't really answer your questions but my 7 yo dd has a somewhat similar wisc-iv spread which I personally don't see very often.(I usually see it where the VCI is much higher or the same as PRI.) Although her PSI isn't nearly as low as your sons.

VCI 95%
PRI >99.9%
WMI 99.7%
PSI 79%

Do you mind my asking why you had your son tested? Was it for entrance into a gifted program or do you have academic concerns?

I'm trying to deduce if my dd may have a hidden learning disability b/c she doesn't always perform up to her ability in class. I haven't figured out if it is an underlying disability or a quirk in her personality/trying to fit in, etc... She does struggle with handwriting. It's still within normal for a 1st grader, but she is frustrated and still reverses a lot.

In a hurry here, and like Dottie I love a puzzle! BUT I also love real data, and you should be able to get your ds' full set of scores. If it's school, you can submit a written request for them; if it's a private provider you can submit a written request for his full file (you might have to pay a slight fee for copying). Personally, I think it's always a good idea to make those requests, even if you think you don't need them now - you might want them later on.

Re the dip in processing speed, that can be a result of an LD or other challenge. Like mountainmom2011, I'm curious what the reasons were you sought out testing?

Best wishes,

polarbear

Thanks for the replies everyone. We actually didn't request the testing at all, and didn't know it was going to happen until a few days before. The school ordered the tests for gifted evaluation, which of course we wanted, so we were happy for the test. They'd already been letting him accelerate in all individual subjects, but needed to certify giftedness to allow a whole grade acceleration, so his homeroom (currently 1st grade) could catch up with all the individual subjects (currently 2nd-4th grade). This is a virtual school, so the logistics of acceleration are much simpler than in a B&M school, but they can always say no, so the test results should ensure they are favorable to acceleration.

Now that we (partially) see the test results, we're certainly curious what the results mean. We're definitely going to try to request the full details from the school, but that could take weeks as they have to get the reports from the testers first. We don't understand why we weren't simply given all the results, and maybe it's going to be a struggle to get hold of that information.

We were surprised the IQ came out as low as it did, (low 130's, barely enough to qualify as gifted), given our son's obvious aptitude for mathematics. The variation among test results has some consistency with what we've observed. He is stronger mathematically than verbally. He does have a good memory, but is sometimes quite slow at some tasks (though I suspect some of the slowness is voluntary). His comprehension is sometimes very good and sometimes not, so a poor performance on a particular comprehension test is plausible, though unlucky. It never occurred to us to consider an "LD", and we would be wary of entering into any kind of evaluation that had the potential of misdiagnosis. We're more inclined to think in terms of relative strengths and weaknesses. We want to understand what the tests may imply but don't want to read too much into them. The PSI score is pretty bad, but who knows what was going on in that part of the test.

Thanks for the calculations, Dottie. So would the sum of scaled scores for WMI 146 be 36? And would the sum of scaled scores for PRI 133-137 be in the range 46-48? (I'm guessing here based on various clues.)

The testers have now given us more details on the WJ-III (but won't for the WISC-IV), so these details are copied below if something can be gleaned from them. (Should I be giving all this detail?). The mathematics scores seem high, but obviously they have been boosted due to having the chance to move far ahead in the curriculum, and to teach himself more advanced things on the internet.

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Since I'm seeking insights on what all this means, I might as well throw in a few anecdotes for what their worth. Our son was an early reader ("self-taught" with the help of toys and PBS) reading longish words at about 2y9m. He was a late talker, with very minimal speech until suddenly bursting into full sentences at about 3y6m. His sleeping had zero correlation with the usual day-night cycle until about 5y6m.

So what does all this mean?

Any suggestions on plans for the future (e.g. accelerate in Mathematics/Science but not English/History)?

Thanks for any comments.

Hi 22B! Your DS sounds a lot like mine, now 9. We have no formal test results for him (it's a lot less usual here in the UK, and there's never been a positive reason to do it) but he was also an early self-taught reader, late talker, bad sleeper, and very mathy (does well in comparisons with mathy people twice his age, both in problem-solving and in syllabus, even though we've been trying hard not to have him speed through syllabus, preferring to get him to think). Also, very good memory, can be slow. Writing was a particular problem until recently, but with some good help from school (and switching to fountain pen) he's doing amazingly much better now.

Not sure whether I can actually be any use, though! We're very fortunate in DS's school; he's with agemates, but in small classes (15) and, I think, enough differentiation that we're likely to leave him with agemates. (He may, or may not, collect one year of acceleration when we move him to senior school at 12/13 - depends where he goes.) I have strong opinions on how to nurture mathematicians, but it may be that you do too ;-) In brief: mathematics is about solving hard problems, not about being able to carry out algorithms; so acceleration to work with typical school material but with older children may be a useful ingredient, but it's definitely not a complete solution.

At the end of my WJIII report for my son it has a section on expected vs. actual performance. Does yours have this?

It looks to me that he would be outperforming is IQ by a factor of 6 or more on the math. This is significant and could mean that there is something about the IQ test or a hidden LD that is causing his score on the IQ test to be lower. It is not really possible to outperform your IQ like this. It would be the equivalent of my intellectually disabled 5 year old who cannot walk and only says mama and dada being able to add, subtract and multiply or divide on a test today. This is not possible, of course. And it is not possible for your son to have a moderately gifted IQ and yet perform an additional 3 SD higher than that in achievement.

(I am not questioning the achievement scores, but I am questioning the IQ scores. Like Dottie, I would expect to see much higher IQ scores).

I would get as much as you can about the test (raw data, etc) and then talk with someone who specializes in gifted children about the scores.

Thanks for the replies everyone.

ColinsMum, it's nice to hear confirmation that my son is not alone with his combination of characteristics. I basically agree with what you say about how to nurture mathematicians - both parents have Maths PhDs and we know what mathematics is about - but that doesn't mean we know what we should be doing so we are very much open to suggestions. I agree with the sentiments in "The Calculus Trap" http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Resources/articles.php?page=calculustrap and "Why Discrete Math Is Important" http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Resources/articles.php?page=discretemath so we certainly want to do many things outside the standard American K-12 Math path. AoPS itself certainly has some interesting such courses, e.g. Counting & Probability and Number Theory, but if someone had courses on set theory, logic, graph theory, etc., then we'd be interested in those too. Mathematics competitions will provide a challenge, and will better gauge where he stands relative to his peers. We will keep accelerating him though, which is easy in a virtual school with its individually paced online courses, until he "officially" gets to (Middle School level) Algebra, and will then diversify into all the other topics and activities.

Dottie, I think you're right that since he could do the timed Math and Reading tests at a good speed, then he should have been been able to do the PSI subtests more quickly. He would know what it meant to do familiar things like Math and Reading quickly, but perhaps when it came to the unfamiliar and novel PSI tasks he'd have no basis for choosing what speed to go at. Perhaps he could have gone much faster, and scored higher (despite making more errors) but he'd have no way of knowing this at the time. This makes me think that PSI is not a robust method for measuring what it's supposed to measure. It's too dependent on a child's choice of speed and how well that choice balances speed and accuracy to maximize score. That's my off the cuff theory anyway. So I'm not going to worry that there's a slow processing issue.

qxp, the WJ-III report did not have the type of information you mentioned. We'll try to get more information. (The WJ-III and WISC-IV were given by two different testers FWIW.) You're right that the combination of scores doesn't seem consistent, so we at least need to put put some healthy error bars on all these numbers. I would (wildly) guess our son is 3 to 4 SD above average in Mathematical ability for his age, so I'm taking the very high WJ-III Math numbers with a grain of salt. I think future Mathematics competitions will give a more accurate picture. On the other hand, the WISC-IV VCI and PSI numbers probably underestimate his abilities, but they could still be his weaker areas. So I would think that if you decrease the higher scores and increase the lower scores, then that would give a more accurate (and plausible) picture. So I'm not thinking the score disparities necessarily indicate some kind of "issue" though I can understand why the concern arises.

Does anyone know what rights one has to obtain full results of testing, including such things as individual subtest scores (raw and scaled), etc.?

What kinds of information do people generally get when they do get some kind of comprehensive report?