Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment RIAS Results - Perspective Needed

While this is my first post, I have already found this community to be tremendously helpful so thank you in advance for all of your sharing.

After being strongly encouraged by our pre-k teachers we finally went ahead and tested our son in the hopes that he would be able to take advantage of the gifted enrichment opportunities our school system has to offer. Well, we met with the psychologist earlier this week and I just don't know how to think about/understand what we learned. As an academic psychologist myself I understand the data technically, but I'm feeling lost about what to expect in terms of practical significance. Here are his results:

VIX - 130 (verbal)
NIX - 153 (non-verbal)
CIX - 142 (composite)

I think I expected him to be in the gifted range but to be more than 3 standard deviations above the mean (non-verbal) has thrown me for a loop. Looking for some guidance from parents who've walked the road before me. I understand as well that this may be over predicting given his age, but all I can think about at the moment are the challenges that may lie ahead. I guess I knew I had a really smart kid but to think that I might have a profoundly gifted one feels like a whole different situation.

Welcome!

I gather you don't need the numbers explained...but I'll just comment that he has a pretty substantial difference between verbal and nonverbal. That will be interesting to monitor, to see if it turns out to be a stable profile, and to see if it is borne out by his actual presentation.

My son's results are pretty similar to your son's, with VIX and NIX reversed. He is very smart, but we don't find him to be blindingly impossible to serve in school, though he has needed accommodations. He does demand a lot of stimulation and we have worked hard to find him outlets outside of school. My son is fortunate to be socially pretty adept and athletic and is not 2E. All this helps a lot. I think a kid with these numbers can do okay in some school systems if he/she does not have other "stuff" going on and parents are willing to work hard to keep him/her stimulated in other ways.

BTW, we don't find that my son's presentation matches the difference found between NIX and VIX on the test. I kind of think this was a random artifact of testing a squirrelly 6yo. His VIX may have turned out a little overhigh, and I think NIX was too low due to strangely average performance on one subtest (the other was quite high).

Welcome! I too find this site to be tremendously helpful! My DD6 took the RIAS at 4 and had very similar results to your son (25 points difference between VIX and NIX). I was a little blown away to see such a high NIX and eventually went on to have a SB5 administered for more information. She went on to have a fairly even profile on the SB5 and the RIAS CIX has shown to be fairly accurate with FSIQ. I know all our kiddos are different, but DD is now a DYS and is showing fairly even academic development. I found the WJ and KTEA results to be helpful in understanding my DD. FWIW I still am struggling with wrapping my head around the struggles that may lie ahead.

My child was given the RIAS at 5. CIX was 142. He is 2e(aspie) and his psych thought at the time it would be the best test to get him into gifted for K.
To the surprise of us all there was no significant scatter between the VIX & NIX. Next week he will be given the WISC, not sure which one. Our psych has told us he will score low in certain areas and high in others. I am curious to see how the end result compares to the RIAS. I have read here and other places that the RIAS tends to score high for some kids and low for others.

Hi there. I don't have much helpful advice, but was (and still am) in the same boat. My daughter was tested in late May and her CIX was 153. I am looking in to having her tested with WISC in the hopes that it will provide more "real" numbers.

I know exactly what you mean about wondering what the scores mean for the future. I fought so hard to get her tested by the school, and when we finally got the results (RIAS) I immediately went from the sense of "I was right! I knew she was different!" to "whoa! What does this mean for her life and parenting her?"

I'm following this thread! We're thinking of giving our 4.5 year old this test this month, but I'm worried it'll be a waste of money and not accurate. Sounds like it was pretty accurate for some people, though?

Thanks to each one of you for chiming in. I think it's hard with kids this little to have a sense of what this information/insight really means. In fact, I certainly noticed the difference between his verbal and non-verbal scores but hadn't thought about the implications of a mis-match or significant difference there. Anyone else (thanks ultramarina for what you shared) have experience with that? Also strangely the reason his pre-k teachers wanted him tested was because of his verbal ability. Crazy...

In our case, DS was an early and very good reader but is also notable for his chess talent, which is certainly not a verbal area. I believe I was told that the analogies section of the RIAS was a "better" (less dependent on cultural knowledge?) indicator than the other verbal section. As always, it's good to look at the kid you have now and remember that he is still the same kid he was before you got the results, which are also limited. I am not a huge fan of this test. It's the only one used in my district and I am informally familiar with the results of some children I know, many of which seem kind of off base to me in both directions (too high/too low). With my own kids, I feel like DS tested a little high and DD tested a little low, though both tested gifted.