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    Joined: Mar 2014
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    Liisa Offline OP
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    Hi,
    I am posting for the first time. My daughter was tested privately when she was 7 years 8 months as we were a bit worried about some word finding issues but there was nothing notable. She had difficulty learning to read but I trained in Orton-Gillingham and worked with her and she has done well in school - reads and writes above grade level. Her scores at that age resulted in GAI of 90 - or 99th %ile. Verbal Comprehension Index - SS 130 - 98th %ile; PRI - SS 132 - 98th %ile. Her processing speed and working memory were lower (PS SS 100 - 50th %ile; WMI SS 103, 58th %ile) with low scores in coding (SS 7 16th %ile) and digit span (SS 8 - 25th %ile)- At that time we did not move ahead with any gifted placement/designation as she was quite happy where she was. Her older brother has been in a gifted program since grade 3 as he really needed it. She is now in grade 7 and we are looking ahead to high school and there is a wonderful gifted program that I think she would do very well in. We brought in the report and the school said it was too old (it was 4 years ago). They said they would retest which they did and her scores no longer qualify her. They said that testing at age 7 years 8 months is not stable.

    They said she was 98th %ile in Verbal Comprehension but only 77th %ile in Perceptual Reasoning. I asked for the sub-test scores - they only gave me the percentiles - and they were definitely significantly lower than when she was tested the first time around.

    Block Design Subtest score 11 (63rd %ile) NOW 91st %ile
    Matrix Reasoning Subtest Score 16 (98th %ile) NOW 37th %ile
    Picture Concepts Subtest score 18 (99.6 %ile) NOW 75th %ile

    Do you know any reason why these sub-test scores would drop so much?

    Any help would be most appreciated. We have a meeting on Monday to discuss.

    Thank you,
    Liisa


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    Hi Liisa,

    From what you know of your dd, which test seems more of an accurate assessment to you? Do you get the sense that the recent test is "off?" Was she tired that day? Does she have undiagnosed vision issues?

    Also, do they just test the two indices? Or do they make decisions based on the GAI or the FSIQ?

    I'm not an expert, so hopefully someone else will chime in.

    Last edited by KADmom; 03/20/14 11:37 AM.
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    I am not an expert but from what I have been told it is true that scores at 7 years old are not very stable. The difference has to do with the statistical norming. For instance at 7 your daughter may have done significantly better than other 7 years olds (which is who she was compared to) but at her current age many of her age peers would have experienced substantial improvement in the way they have performed. So regression to the mean (which is what this is called) is pretty normal. It is not that your DD performed less well it is simply that other performed better at this current age than they did before.

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    Originally Posted by psychland
    I am not an expert but from what I have been told it is true that scores at 7 years old are not very stable. The difference has to do with the statistical norming. For instance at 7 your daughter may have done significantly better than other 7 years olds (which is who she was compared to) but at her current age many of her age peers would have experienced substantial improvement in the way they have performed. So regression to the mean (which is what this is called) is pretty normal. It is not that your DD performed less well it is simply that other performed better at this current age than they did before.

    psychland, I think that the difference liisa's dd's scores show is too large of a difference to be attributed to regression to the mean.

    Re stability of IQ tests, I have also heard that results for young children are not always reliable, but I've also heard that 7-8 years old is usually the age that it's ok to start relying on results - it's the tests given at 4-5 etc that might yield wildly inaccurate numbers.

    liisa, did the school only offer VIQ and PRI subtests, or did they also give the Processing Speed and Working Memory sections of the WISC? I suspect that what you are seeing is related to whatever caused the large discrepancy in her Processing Speed subtest scores back at 7. Overall, it looks like there is something 2e going on - both with the two sets of test scores (discrepancies) and with having had to teach your dd to read via O-G.

    The things I would do:

    1) Request a full score report from the school - before the meeting. Postpone the meeting until you've had a chance to see all the actual subtest scores, not just percentiles. Also see if there are any notes re what happened during testing (things like, did your dd appear distracted etc). You might not get any of this, but ask.

    2) Who is going to be at the meeting on Monday? Is it a "team" meeting with teachers and whoever ran the test? Just gifted teacher? If you want to, you can also ask to talk to the person who administered the test individually prior to your meeting. This would give you a chance to better understand what might be going on with the scores, which in turn will help you prepare for the meeting.

    3) You can google "WISC subtest descriptions" online and read through the specific descriptions - I'd do that, and see if you see any correlations between the subtests that are low and things you've noticed when working with your dd. For instance, the coding subtest requires the student to copy directional marks and it's timed. It can be a challenge for children who have vision issues as well as children who have fine motor challenges and children who are perfectionists might also have a low score on it relative to their other scores. When you go through each subtest thinking through the exact specific skill that is used, is it timed, etc, you then try to piece it all together and see what makes sense. For instance, if coding was low but symbol search (finding matching symbols in a busy random field) isn't low, then that would potentially point to a fine motor rather than vision issue causing the low coding score. Then you'd think through - do I see signs of a fine motor challenge in my child's classwork or achievement testing etc. It's like a puzzle, and as the parent it's most likely going to be up to you to put it all together (for now).

    3) Many of us parents of 2e kids here who have discrepancies in subtest scores etc have found that it's helpful to have the testing done through a private neuropsychologist, both because a neuropsychologist will follow up the discrepancies with additional testing themselves and/or suggest evals by other types of professionals to get to the root of what's causing the ups and downs in subtest scores, as well as spend time with you reviewing their findings, which will include observations of behavior during the testing, reviews of schoolwork, and a discussion of the students' developmental history which may tie in with some of the observed testing ups and downs.

    4) I think (and my memory isn't that great, so you should double check lol!) that the Matrix Reasoning subtest relies on vision. Your dd had a tough time learning how to read but didn't test positive for dyslexia or other reading challenges at the time - this *could* also be an indication of a vision challenge - possibly things not related to the eyesight in each eye but related to how well the eyes work together - do they track each other, is peripheral vision ok, are the eye muscles weak, can your child focus her eyes up close etc.

    5) Did the school give your dd any achievement testing at the time they gave her the new WISC? (WJ-III or WIAT etc?) If they did, what did those scores look like? Were they consistent or were there relative highs and lows? If she had discrepancies in the achievement subtest scores, it would be helpful to look at those and compare with the WISC subtest score discrepancies - chances are there is a clue there as to what is going on.

    polarbear

    ps - this isn't going to help in understanding the WISC scores, but might help in advocating. Does your school district offer any nationally normed achievement tests to the full student body (such as TerraNova or ITBS etc)? If they do, are those scores considered for the gifted program placement? If your dd has high scores on those tests, bring them with you to your meeting. Also bring examples of her work.

    Last edited by polarbear; 03/20/14 12:49 PM.
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    Was your daughter administered the same version of the WISC both times or did she take the WISC-III the first time and then the WISC-IV this time?

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    Polarbear we were told when we had our daughter evaluated that the scores were only a measure of range until about 11 and at that point they were pretty stable over time. We were also told that any score over 130 and below 70 was very unstable. While IQ tests were used for individuals in those ranges that is not what they were designed for and not to be surprised if the scores varied wildly over time if they were in those ranges.

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    That is the spatial area and it is an area where some studies have suggested that girls fall off the charts as they hit puberty. The studies vary, but there does seem to be an effect.

    These tests are also strongly correlated with anything that improves your spatial reasoning. Is your daughter interested in Lego, Minecraft, baseball, soccer, football, and chess?

    If not, there is a VERY good chance that many boys and "nerdy girls" in her cohort have had approximately 5 years of intensive training in spatial reasoning, visual abstract problem solving, and visual details, which she has missed.

    Many boys who excel at math and science spend 10-15 more hours per week on video games that train them precisely for this test. Minecraft and Lego could be looked at as one huge spatial logic training ground.

    Even without video games, sports and other spatial-training exercises tend to reach boys more, for whatever reason.

    It's very common for girls to fall off the cliff in this area especially at puberty. Testosterone also is linked, even among adult men in studies which don't look at women at all, with spatial reasoning, though not linearly: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0306453095000518

    Instead, lower testosterone in women lowers spatial performance. (The scientists don't get it, either.)

    Whether this is due to testosterone being linked to participation in sports, or whether participation in sports is linked to spatial and visual abilities which is caused by testosterone, is hotly debated.

    The point is, a lot of girls fall behind in spatial tasks around puberty, though the differences have been decreasing in recent years.

    http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/bul/117/2/250/

    The point is just to say--hormones do play a role in brain development and spatial abilities, so your daughter may be at a stage where her spatial brain isn't getting the majority of the development. It doesn't mean she isn't a spatial thinker, but that she's testing at the wrong time of the year.

    (Believe it or not... women's spatial abilities have been linked to the time of the month:

    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0162309593900219

    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/027826269090058V

    I know about this because I looked into it when choosing the date to take my GREs as an adult. And yes, I believe it worked--I certainly got one of my better scores in math.)

    Last edited by binip; 03/21/14 12:40 PM.

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