Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional High VCI, Low PRI on Wisc4 / Dyslexia

We just got the "official" diagnosis and test results for DD7 after 3 years of steadily increasing educational supports.

Verbal Comprehension (VCI) 150 (>99TH)
Perceptual Reasoning (PRI) 94 (34TH)
Working Memory (WMI) 97 (42ND)
Processing Speed (PSI) 112 (79TH)

The school is offering a dyslexia diagnosis and an IEP. They seemed a little surprised by the VCI ("I have never tested a child who scored that high on verbal comprehension in 20 years.") and I'm looking at them thinking, "Did you think I was lying or delusional when I told you she likes me to read Harry Potter out loud to her and that, yes, she follows the story and can extrapolate larger themes if asked?" I realize it's unusual for a child to comprehend at a level so far beyond her decoding level but it isn't unique!

I suspect the scores of parts of the test that required pencil and paper work are depressed because she has fine motor control issues. Not truly awful but noticeably below that of her peers. The school offered no ideas as to why they thought there was such a large scatter between her VCI and PRI scores other than some tepid "maybe she was getting bored" throwaways. I suppose, the dyslexia diagnosis is their answer though, honestly, they were not clear on how they had gotten to that point. It wasn't a wholly satisfactory meeting in that it was clear they had some to their conclusion, which conveniently was the one I wanted them to come to, and were just going to read the reports to us .

At this point I have her scheduled with a developmental optometrist to do a thorough vision workup, not just a nearsightedness screening to rule out physical eye issues. I'd feel a bit awful if she were struggling with visual distortions that can be compensated for and I didn't check into it. I admit I didn't bother mentioning this to the school as things like the colored overlays are not wholly accepted.

Twice-exceptional, here we are.

I'm not an expert but how is her vision?

Well, I am not an expert either, but I do have a dyslexic child, and I have never, ever heard of making a dyslexia diagnosis based only on a WISC. I believe that is not standard at all, and doubt it could be done. In fact, many claim that dyslexia does not affect IQ scores. A dx of dyslexia is usually made after an extensive battery of tests -- my son was tested over five afternoons, and was given tests of reading and phonemic awareness in addition to IQ.

There was also a WJ achievement, a battery against town standards and an elaborate phonemic testing. I have spared you the 25 pages of results

She is not nearsighted We will be doing a more comprehensive vision screening next Tuesday.

My son had a similar scatter between PRI and VCI. And he only scored as high as he did on PRI b/c he worked sooo hard he really wanted to give up. He has/had in my opinion a lot of dyslexia symptoms. But he reads over a grade level above and comprehends several grade levels above. He has a visual perception disorder and receives vision therapy. Dyslexia was ruled out ( though I worry he has stealth dyslexia). He also had dysgraphia.

I am also not an expert, but here are my thoughts...



There are two subtests that require pencil and paper (Coding and Symbol Search) and both are within the PSI. Coding requires the greatest fine motor skills. The Block Design subtest (within the PRI) also requires some fine motor skills to manipulate the blocks. Since Block Design is only one of three subtests within the PRI, fine motor issues shouldn't have a 'huge' impact on the PRI composite score. There are only two subtests that go into the PSI, so fine motor skills can have a dramatic impact here.

Do you have the scaled scores for each of the 10 subtests? If not, you may want to request them. The scatter within the subtests can be as useful as the scatter between the four indexes when trying to figure out what is going on. For instance, is Block Design the lowest PRI score? And is the Coding score much lower than Symbol Search?

I assume this comment was given by people who didn't administer the test? As I understand it, the subtests are intermixed when they are administered. That is, the Block Design subtest (from PRI) is given first, followed by Similarities (from VCI) followed by Digit Span (from WMI), followed by Picture Concepts (from VCI), etc. So getting bored shouldn't have an impact on just one of the four indexes. The tester should have provided notes about the test behavior if he or she saw any indication that the scores may not be a good representation of the child.

If you don't feel like your questions are being answered by the school and the tester, there are psychologists with experience in gifted and 2E that will re-interpret the scores for you. Another reason to try to get the subtest scores if you don't have them already.

Pi22

I do have the subtest scores and, alas, the person who offered the bored option was the test administrator.

I actually think the dyslexia diagnosis is dead on; I've had suspicions of it for years and was told "it's too early to tell". I just suspect motor control issues lowered scores that required writing and plan to check out whether eye sight is an issue.

The whole meeting was not exactly useful except in that they are offering exactly the supports I want the child to have for the reading issues and we can now move them from non-mandated supports to mandated supports.

I live in CT so they have no mandate to address the gifted part of the 2e equation at all. MathQuest starts in 4th grade and until then it's up to the teacher to differentiate at will. My son's teacher does differentiate math for him. I had no idea DD was unusually good at math (in comparison to her brother she is not, especially. They are twins.) so to be told she had finished the grade 2 curriculum and was the best math student in the class was a bit of a surprise. However, they don't have to accommodate that or challenge her in that area at all. Gifted education is not an exceptionality that CT schools must meet.

I'm a bit unsure how to challenge her in the areas she excels. She's NOT a fan of audio books so the school's suggestion that I offer her audio books so she can continue to explore ideas at her interest and comprehension level without needing to read them while a reasonable suggestion isn't going to help. I don't want her to feel totally overwhelmed with the academic support work for the areas she struggles AND with enrichment stuff.

DD is very slow with written work (and slow in general with ADHD) and it was processing speed that was below 100. She has been tested and doesn't have fine motor issues, but I'm not convinced that she doesn't have dysgraphia. DS actually has developmental coordination disorder and is getting an IEP for fine motor and his processing speed score is about the same as your DD.

Does anyone think dyslexia would cause a lowish Perceptual Reasoning score or a gap? I guess i haven't seen anything about that one way or the other, but it might make some sense if a child is looking at complex patterns. My kids have both displayed traits of hyperlexia (the neurological opposite) and they are both higher on PR than verbal.

One test you could ask about is the TVPS which tests visual perception. I don't understand their "she must have gotten bored" theory because I think testers usually alternate tests, for instance do a PR one, then a verbal one, then working memory, etc. rather than doing all verbal together, then all PR, etc.

It's a very large gap and went wholly unexplained other than "she's just very strong in one area".