Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment New here/Ceiling Q's

Parent as well and have a few thoughts that may help...

- agree processing and memory are important to understand how the cognitive abilities of a child will be expressed. GAI is a useful tool when trying to demonstrate the cognitive abilities in a child with a LD, ADHD, etc to ensure they are not overlooked when placement into gifted program is at stake. As well as it is used to ensure children with cognitive disabilities are not precluded from special needs services due to skewing higher on memory or processing. ADHD and LD are not the only reasons for depressed WM and PSI...timing anxiety; fine motor skills challenges, as well as I've read some believe processing speed develops slower in EG/PG young children...and the scores do increase especially in boys as they get older. Again, I believe I've read that.

I was only given my son's GAI as his processing was 97 and he has fine motor delays. His WM was in gifted range so just PSI was a concern.

As for extended norms...my understanding is you can hit an 18 and the ceiling at same time as the stop rule may be a certain number wrong consecutively versus overall. So child may miss enough to have an 18 without hitting the stop rule. My own child was a 19 on every VCI subtest and several PRI and extended norms were used. With the extended norms he also ceilinged 3 of the VCI (yet was at a 23 not the limit of i think 27 because of the consecutive rule) and 1 of the PRI so his extended norm score is significantly ahead of his fsiq and still a underestimation most likely...but once at 99.9 does it make a difference...in the usefulness of the score that is...too little known about the small population. Ha!

As for additional subtests our tester used them all on my son. She only used the core ones to obtain IQ scores. i realize the additional subtests are there for when substitutions need to be made for various and rare reasons but i understand they also are used to gain more insight into the child (outside of the calculated score). As my tester said...EG/PG children are so rare it is valuable to study everything about their cognitive ability we can to provide educational guidance and support. Of course she also charged by the hour

but those additional subtests have given us some insight...between the GAI and Extended Norms I never know what number to use. My tester however only reports the GAI with extended norms so the number looks super scary.

http://alpha.fdu.edu/psychology/WISCIV_Substitution.htm

So then did she pick the highest subtests to use in the FSIQ? It seems like this would unfairly bring up the IQ for kids who have psychs who do this...of course a child's full scale score will be higher if the poor scores are thrown out or not used. I was under the impression that they have to choose ahead of time which tests they are going to use in the scoring...so if a child has a known fine motor issue, the tester might decide to replace block design with something else, and never give them the block design test.

The VCI score looks wrong. Ask the tester to check.

What do you mean 22B?

Oh I know... I made the mistake! The Vocab is NOT 19.. its 16! Whoops!

The 140 is inconsistent with the 19,19,15. There is an error somewhere.

Hi not sure if question is directed to me or OP as I indicated our tester did all subtests. The additional ones were not used for scoring. Score was based on the typical subtests used. Additional ones were used for information gathering purposes only. She does reference them in her report...like how symbol search was lowest thus indicating processing is more than fine motor alone... Etc.

The neuropsych who did my DS6's testing did two substitutions because of a diagnosed fine motor issue. From what he told me as well as what I have read, there needs to be a diagnosis or reason to do it rather than just choosing to substitute to increase scores. Even though he did the substitutions, he did administer all the subtests -- even those that had fine motor components that in the end weren't used to calculate his IQ.

Ok, I got concerned thinking they threw out low scores and kept high ones. I think my DD would have actually done better on digit span than arithmetic. Not sure why the tester chose to make a substitution there.