Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment 29 point IQ drop in two years with no symptoms

Do you think that the test was scored/administered accurately, then, and the lower numbers really are indicative of her true score? Because I still can't grasp why, at the very least, the four sections that parallel the WASI wouldn't have been fairly equivalent to her WASI scores of 136/129.

If she does have these deficits, are they treatable?

I don't see any evidence that suggests the test is invalid, but that doesn't mean the results are necessarily indicative of her true ability. I think what you may be looking at is a 2e situation, where some of her gifted-type traits are being masked by her (I'm guessing) executive dysfunction-type traits, whether the latter is ADHD, disinhibition, or possibly another dx, like NVLD or ASD. (Obviously, I can't diagnose her over the internet. ) And vice versa.

Oh, and yes, she can learn compensatory strategies for her relative weaknesses, like all functioning adults eventually do. She may just need more explicit instruction in reading social cues and self-monitoring. Fluency, unfortunately, comes only by practice, but she can certainly improve there too.

Update: I met today with her regular psychologist, who had reviewed all the papers. She spoke with a colleague who is a supervisor in the university program that provided the testing, and he thought the evaluator was just inexperienced enough not to see the "gray" areas in her responses. She feels that ADHD is as much on the table as GAD, and agrees that her abilities are masking the symptoms on the VAI.

We are going to wait and see how she does with more cognitive therapy for social and attention skills, and be ready to jump into more testing when we have a better idea what's working and what's not.

Thank you so much for all your help.

DD8 has ADHD and also had processing issues. It's not necessarily obvious in a 1 on 1 situation like an IQ test. There is a person right there keeping the child focused and on task. DD's main problem in the classroom is all the distractions and activity. The difference between her processing speed and GAI on the WISC was something like 60 points. Which in many/most cases is probably not normal. She also has problems with math fluency and remembering the math facts. If you ask what is 9+5 she may very well give you a blank stare for a few seconds even though it's not a hard question. Her working memory was fine, 96th percentile I think so those are two different issues. Some neuropsychs do computerized testing for ADHD which you could look into. It seems more objective to me than someone's random observations. It measures how long a child can sustain attention and how impulsive they are. DS had this testing and he tended to slow way down in his responses after a while, indicating possible inattentive ADHD. Since medication has been so helpful with DD we are doing a trial of meds with DS as well. If they don't help much or at all, then I will assume his issue is something other than ADHD.