Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Need help interpreting son's WPPSI scores

Hello-

We received the results of my son's WPPSI IV today. He was tested for admission at a school and while we received a report, we aren't quite sure how to interpret it. As the test was done as part of a school admission process, we cannot just call the psychologist and demand more interpretation.

If it matters, my son is almost five.



As you can see, there is a huge discrepancy between his Fluid Reasoning and Processing Speed and the Verbal Comprehension score. I am concerned that this indicates some kind learning disability or processing issue. I've read that it might indicate a visual processing problem?

To be honest, I was expecting to see some kind of discrepancy because I have felt that my son is struggling with something even though he's so bright in other areas. Specifically, he has a hard time with writing, social skills and gross motor/coordination activities. I'd really appreciate any insight you can provide about if these scores indicate a problem and, if so, what it might be (and what we can do to help him!)

Thank you so much!

Fluid Reasoning has some overlap with visual ability, but mainly it is a measure of abstraction. His concrete visual-spatial skills appear good, as block design is not far off of his verbal comprehension subtest scores, in the Superior range. Visual working memory is good too (picture memory), in the Very Superior range. So it's not visual skills per se that appear to be the hang up. It's more like abstract reasoning, and even more, processing speed.

Yes, this is an unusual range of index scores, and would normally suggest that the Full Scale is not fully representative of his ability profile, though in his case, the strong block design and picture memory scores do help to balance the areas of relative weakness. The Full Scale doesn't require or include picture concepts or cancellation. It almost looks like the examiner tacked on two extra subtests -because- the indices appeared discrepant from the others--possibly in an attempt to see if the results were fluke-y, or maybe because they've had experiences with needing more data in those areas before. I can see completing the whole fluid reasoning index, as that and verbal comp are the best predictors of overall intelligence. The second processing speed subtest doesn't have an obvious justification, though, outside of probing for a discrepancy.

Sorry, wandered off into psychometric musings for a moment, there!

A relative weakness in fluid reasoning would certainly have many implications for social skills, as social perception and social reasoning are quite abstract, relying, as they do, heavily on perspective-taking. Weak fine motor speed (which is what may be behind the relatively lower processing speed scores) would certainly make sense with writing and gross motor/motor coordination issues.

Diagnosing learning disabilities at age 4 is a tricky business, but there is certainly enough here to keep a close eye on him. The kind of skills he might excel at at this age are still largely concrete (mainly what I would consider vocabulary activities--learning the language of various disciplines, whether that means actual reading, basic arithmetic facts/operations, or scientific/historical facts), and draw mostly on his excellent verbal skills. As academic reading and writing begin to require more inferential comprehension and analysis (not for a while yet!), this kind of profile, should it persist, might present more of a challenge.

However, at this age, cognitive development is still quite fluid, so it is not at all unreasonable that this might represent asynchronous development. Again, I would keep an eye on him, but not panic. Also, it may be worthwhile to anchor your perceptions of "hard time" against a good selection of typically-developing four-year-olds (if you can find any!). None of his scores are below normative, at the moment. I don't know what your situation is, but is it possible that his writing, social skills, and gross motor skills are actually within normal limits for late four-year-olds, but your perceptions are being dragged off by his advanced language and visual-spatial skills? Has he otherwise been assessed for these suspected areas of delay? At nearly five, you can absolutely take him to your local public school district's early childhood diagnostic center and ask them to take a look at him (request an evaluation for an IEP/IFSP), if you are seriously concerned. If you do, just make sure to bring your other testing results as well, so they don't re-test him with the exact same instrument (if it's close enough in time, they may ask to supplement with some of the other subtests, and combine the results).

So, in summary, the scores are unusual, they could be an indicator of a problem, or they could be not. If you're concerned, take him to the school district and request a special ed eligibility evaluation.

So.... if you did see such a profile in a ten-year old, what kind of warning bells would it ring?

I've been struggling with very similar patterns for some time, as one (both?) of my kids seem to have something odd going on with their PRIs. For DS10, fluid reasoning (if you exclude block design) 2-3 SDs below verbal, plus low processing speed. Yet labelled a natural mathematician by all who meet him.... (His younger sister - the one recently diagnosed with dyslexia - has a similar pattern).

Still trying to get a grip on DD, so had parked all my DS questions for later posts - but since this question has come up, I'd love to hear more!

I've seen this kind of pattern in students who may be very good at each area individually, but struggle to transfer, integrate, and generalize. They may know all the right answers in isolation, but can't seem to make the leap to applying the skills in fluid, live situations. Problem-solving, especially when you don't know the ground rules, and have to deduce them from the data, or infer them from partial patterns, can be a challenge. Again, this intuitively connects to difficulties with social situations, which are, by their nature, a constantly-shifting system of inconsistent, complex rules, full of incomplete data sets. And they take place in real-time, with no pause, rewind, or slo-mo button. Past the primary years, you begin to see relative weaknesses in reading comprehension, as inference becomes more important. Writing with literary/character analysis can be difficult, too, again because of the role of inference, and all the imaginative/perspective-taking leaps that we demand of students in higher-level writing tasks.

Speculatively, I wonder how many ivory tower researchers are a bit like this, especially those stereotypical inch-wide-mile-deep types, with no common sense survival skills.

There may possibly be some overlap with ASD, too, as one of the distinctions between NVLD and ASD is that with ASD, the visual-spatial skills are often spared, but abstraction can be challenging. I would certainly start off with both NVLD and ASD in the diagnostic mix.

What do you see in your DD/DS? Does any of this sound consistent? Inconsistent?

Wow - food for thought, thanks aeh. I apologize to all that this question seems to be happening simultaneously in two separate threads, triggered by completely different posts that both have me asking the same questions. Lepa - I really hope this extra discussion is useful with respect to to your OP, and doesn’t complete hijack your post! Please boot me off to another thread if you are finding this discussion too far off track.

So as noted in kathleen'smum's thread on "Dyslexia... finally", our main concern with DS10 is inability to get words out of his head and onto paper. polar bear and bluemagic provided some different takes on this challenge, and I'm sort of attempting to try them on and see if anything fits. Stealth dyslexia? Expressive language? Written expressive disorder? Or is it, as I keep getting told, just the way he is? So I am really trying to understand people’s experience of these different challenges, what it looked like in practice, and how it could be detected by a professional. So many LDs seem to look so different in gifties than usual descriptions; I feel like I might be missing important issues.

Nothing about DS has ever gave us reason to consider ASD - but note caveat above! The descriptions of NVLD I came across in my recent LD research never resonated either, but I’ve just taken a new and more careful look. There are pieces, to be sure, especially around social awkwardness, but the overall NVLD picture doesn’t quite fit. Part of the challenge is that low PRI doesn’t really fit what we observe, either. Anyone who’s met him would likely assume his higher scores would be PRI, rather than VCI. As a typical example, he’s doing fairly advanced computer programming, and the common refrain from his teachers is “I can’t believe how fast he grasps the really complex concepts - but it’s a real challenge to get him to pay attention to the details.” As a toddler, you could see that he could easily picture math concepts in his head, and he “discovered” multiplication, fractions - and multiplication of fractions - on his own as a pre-schooler. Lots of complex symmetry in all his building toys. In math problems that involve any kind of “mapping out” to get to your answer, he’s often there way ahead of me, and I need four steps on paper to slog through and confirm his answer. Computation skills are reasonable - he’s not super fast with his times-tables, for example, but he’s got the answers.

So a 99.9th percentile block design pushes his PRI up to 97th, (despite processing speed at 25th!), but the other two subtests are 50th/ 91st for MR and PC. Just to confuse, he was tested at 8 and 10, and got those same two score both times - but reversed. Part of why I wonder if there’s something odd there. Block design alone seems a limited base for his math tendencies, I would think? Oh, but other confounder - very good working memory (99.6th), which could probably cover a world of sins…

Now applying that more complex reasoning to people, you ask? Hmmm. Very hard to say about a ten-year old boy who loves all the hard sciences, but has zero interest in “anything that doesn’t require electricity” (except black holes, of course). Safe to say he'll never be an arts major. Has high potential for absent-minded professor. It’s distinctly possible weakness in more social aspects of reasoning could be an emerging problem area, but it’s hard to say right now. I will certainly pay more attention to what goes on in English class et al with this lens. Comprehension (AKA “practical social reasoning” is an outlier on both kids VCIs, though it jumped on his between ages 8 and 10 (from 50 to 91, on a VCI now of 99.6th).

So in general - before thinking about your posts here, I would have said abstract concepts were a strength, at least in math, science and engineering areas. Creative, yes; imaginary play, no. I remember his grade 3 teacher commenting that he was the only one who laughed at the jokes she she read more complex (french) books to them. But he is shy, and yes, does have the social skills of an engineer…. But while he can’t express his own emotions well, he is very emotional, and very sensitive to emotions and tone in others. His school record actually states that our two key criteria for teachers are “eccentric” and “cheerful” (turns out we can survive anything as long as we have those two things.)

Sorry - tried really hard not to explode with detail, and didn’t succeed.

To anyone, with anything?

@Aed, thank you so much for your detailed and very helpful answer. I have to admit that it did make me feel a bit worried. Not only am I worried about what problems showing up later but, in the short term, I'm wondering if the school we are applying to will reject him because they will suspect a learning disability or future problem. The school seems like such a great fit for my son's skills, passions and personality and we haven't found any other place that seems so right for him.

I asked my son about the bug search "game" and he told me he had no idea that he should try to do it quickly. Maybe he was just trying to take his time and be careful? He's very conscientious and generally tries to do things well instead of quickly.

To answer your questions, my son's writing is getting better. This spring he mostly refused to write, couldn't hold a pencil correctly and showed no interest in drawing or coloring. He was, however, obsessed with making art and "contraptions" out of string, tape and wire so we just let him play around with those materials and he has now become more interested in drawing. He can now write his name but doesn't choose to write unless prompted by his teachers at preschool. He rarely draws anything representational. His drawings mostly consist of scribbles and they are accompanied by elaborate descriptions or stories. His fine motor skills are mostly fine with building Legos or even sewing buttons. Neither his pediatrician nor his teachers are concerned about his gross motor skills but I see that he doesn't do the same things that other kids his age do. He doesn't swim or ride a scooter. He's just now learning how to ride a balance bike. He didn't jump off of steps until recently. He's very tall (99.9% for height) and learned to walk a bit late (16 months, so within the normal but late range) so it's possible he's just growing into his body. He is also very cautious and safety-conscious so maybe it's just his personality?

My son participates in a social skills playgroup on the recommendation of his preschool teachers. The psychologist who runs the group assessed him (and did a classroom observation) and recommended sending him to a gifted school. The psychologist said my son had exceptional conceptual thinking skills. I'm not sure that his test results have shown that? She believes that he isn't connecting with kids at school because he lacks peers in the classroom. He's also an introvert. His eye contact isn't great but he does well with older kids, adults and with kids one-on-one. We have discussed it extensively and the psychologist does not believe that he has Asbergers.

I'm curious about whether there are there any activities that might help him to develop stronger fluid reasoning skills?

@MichelleC: Your descriptions of your son are very interesting. I feel like he is very much like mine. I especially found it interesting that your son has a similar profile and is gifted at math. My husband is a very gifted mathematician and I anticipate that my son may be strong in that area, too. My son has been mostly interested in science so we haven't explored math with him because we believe in following his lead -- so I don't know what we'll see once he does start really doing math. He did, however, spontaneously teach himself basic arithmetic right before he turned three. He also is interested in fairly complex math ideas and easily grasped fractions, exponential notation and factorials after brief explanations. I showed my husband this thread and he said he wouldn't be surprised if his own profile is similar to our son's. He said he has always had a hard time with reading comprehension. He scored above average in it, but it wasn't something that came easily to him. He got a perfect SAT score so he can't be so bad at it but it's interesting, nonetheless. In case you are wondering how he turned out, I'd say pretty well. He has a PhD in math, many patents and continues to do research that wins awards in his field. He is also socially awkward and not so good with eye contact. My mother in law, who was also highly gifted and taught math, is similar. Her eye contact is better but she's terrible at reading social cues.

Like you, I would have expected tests to show that our son grasps complex concepts easily. As I said above, the psychologist even noted this. Like your son, he's interested in hard sciences (electricity, magnetism, elements, particles, black holes, engineering). Like your son, he is very creative but it's more focused on problem solving and inventing than on the kind of imaginary play I see in other kids or with his younger brother. For example, at two he showed no interest in figurines or normal toys. He loved to go to the thrift store and dig through boxes of e waste and buy them so we could build contraptions out of them (at three he was trying to build an oscilloscope). He loves to tell elaborate stories about things he wants to invent. Like your son, he has a great sense of humor and is very empathic and affectionate.