Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy how to describe impact of low processing speed

Hi all,

Lots of our kiddos have very low processing speeds relative to VCI/PRI. DS7 is one - he has a 94 point difference between VCI and PSI.

I wonder if any of you could offer good words/analogies to explain the struggles this can cause? I'm having a meeting tomorrow where I may offer some info about DS's assessment results. But I'm struggling to put this impact into words. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Sue

This would be wonderful... My son has very low processing relative to VCI/PRI and I do think I need to be more educated about how it manifests as well as his educators...

I thought this was a good article and shared it with the schools. Whether they read it or not is another question, but maybe you could take out key points to summarize.

http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10782.aspx

I have one son with slow processing....sometimes the time given for everyone is plenty of time for him. Sometimes it just isn't quite enough time. From middle school on, I have had teachers say that they are more than willing to give him that extra bit of time because what they get in quality is ten times his age/grade and they looked forward to the end product more than worrying about if he got an extra day.

In running and swimming, coaches will talk about fast twitch muscles and slow twitch muscles. Sprinters are fast twitch and long distance are slow twitch. You can't discount the slow twitch distance athletes as not as awesome as fast twitch. But Jesse Owens was a terrific track sprinter and Katie ladecky distance swimmer are both awesome in their own way.

Hope this helped.

With great hesitation - I'll offer what I've come up with so far. Please keep in mind that for DS7 - the biggest struggle is still social interaction. He hasn't hit that "increased demand" point that others have described at third grade, or middle school, etc.

Here it is:

Imagine you are designing the Google self-driving car. You begin with 5 basic sets of sensors, and processors to handle the data from each. The result - a car that drives itself without crashing into things. Your car works great on a test track with two obstacles and a top speed of 10 miles per hour.

But it crashes when more obstacles are added or speed is increased. So you upgrade all your sensors. Then to be safe, you upgrade them a couple more times. So now your car is taking in 1,000 times more data - all the data it needs to go fast while avoiding many obstacles.

Unfortunately, you forget to upgrade your processors, too.

Imagine what will happen to your ride when that 1,000 times more data hits those non-upgraded processors. Best case scenario is all stop. Worst case - better call 911.

Please poke holes, comment, etc. I don't want to look like an idiot if I try to make this analogy.

I actually tend to describe processing speed in terms of the conditions that will generate the highest quality response, instead of attempting to develop analogies for the underlying learning profile:

If you give this child x % additional time (standard accommodations are +50, +100, or unlimited), the quality and depth of his/her response will skyrocket, and you will get to see the child who scores in the top 1 out of 100 (or whatever their level is) in problem-solving ability. If you restrict them to normal time limits, you will miss out on that child, and will instead see only their much lower (bottom 1 out of 100 or whatever it actually is) speed. Most teachers are motivated by seeing children perform well and demonstrate skills and knowledge. While extra time benefits most students, the magnitude of the benefit is not remotely comparable for a child with slow processing speed. Rarely do I have a teacher who does not get on board once this is explained to them.

This explanation also has the advantage of applying to all underlying causes of slow processing speed on a pragmatic level, without having to get into complicated explanations of the exact neuropsychological or motor processes involved. Which, for some teachers, is a bit eye-glazing.

Aeh - could you talk about how you'd apply that sort of discussion in the context of behavioral/social interaction difficulties? DS does not yet have trouble keeping up with work tempo. But he has all sorts of troubles when it comes to functioning in an overwhelming environment. He didn't assess as SPD, ADHD or ASD, but has many of the social/emotional challenges that come with those LDs, and our neuropsych emphasized the PSI as a significant source of struggle. But I just don't see how to explain this.

Thanks all for the thoughts,
Sue Who Needs to Look Up from her Little View of the World
P.S. Whhaaaat?? There are people who don't think about computers and processors all day? How could this be?

In the behavioral/social context:

In an average social/classroom situation, social cues and signals are whizzing by fast and furious. Remarkably, most children are able to catch, process, and respond to them accurately. For a child with slow processing speed, by the time they have caught, processed, and responded to the beginning of the social interaction, three or four (or more) additional signals may have gone by. Or, just as often, by the time they have caught the fact that a social interaction of significance is beginning, they are only able to catch, process, and respond to a cue many steps into the interaction, without knowing what the beginning was, which makes it, naturally, rather challenging to determine the appropriate response at that point. This is overwhelming and discouraging, which is why such children often give up, get frustrated, or respond in an odd or disproportionate way to what appears to us to be ordinary social situations. Social interactions are a form of mixed verbal and nonverbal conversation, for which slow processors are able to absorb only bits and pieces.

Just as with academic situations, if we give them additional time and space (often in a quiet one-to-one setting) to process social situations a little bit at a time, they often demonstrate much better social comprehension than it might at first appear. They also benefit from explicit instruction in many of the skills that NT children absorb unconsciously from their environments, because the flood of interactions going by is too quick and confused for them to make the cause-and-effect connections that teach those skills in NT children. The better the knowledge and skill base in social-emotional functioning that we can give them through instruction at their processing pace, the more able they will be to infer the patterns of social situations (and the adaptive responses to them) from the bits and pieces that they are able to glean at full speed.

If you think about social reasoning and cause-and-effect thinking as A + B + C = D (simplistic, yes), and slow processing speed as causing children to miss one of ABCD, then you can see how they have difficulty learning social calculus. Especially if one misses a different letter or more every time, so that sometimes one sees A + B = D, or A + C = D, or B = D, or A + B + C = ?

Beautiful aeh. Thank you. Ready for my meeting now.

Sue

The doctor who did dd10's testing explained to me that dd's slow processing speed makes her a careful, deep thinker. He encouraged me to nurture that, to let her think slowly, that the world needs more careful thinkers. <3

I don't know if this applies for your DS, but a psychologist who evaluated mine at age 7-8 ish explained it like this: DS processing speed is just average, and 30+ points difference between reasoning ability. Psych said that behavioral issues were likely related to "reaching for low hanging fruit" in his interactions with other children.

IOW, he could quickly/easily access something low-level and silly to entertain his classmates and get some social acceptance. His more reflective process was (and still is) way far out, takes a lot more time to articulate, and would likely be experienced as odd by children who aren't similar.

This is still true--but in his gifted program, he has found peers who "get" him. Teachers are a little more mixed...

Another thing, and I don't really know if this is related to PSI, but I can imagine how it might be: DS is the kid who will ALWAYS get caught and in trouble for things everyone else is doing, also. I think this is related to not being attuned to social cues and perhaps also to spending a lot of time in that grey area of reconciling reasoning v. speed. He's always a few beats behind in this sort of thing. He doesn't have the savvy to both interact with peers and notice what the adults in charge are doing/thinking/cueing. He has pretty severe EF deficits, though, so this may not really be relevant to the PSI thing.

This doesn't really apply to schoolwork, I realize. And DS can produce his work in a normal amount of time, I guess because his speed is "average" and not below. Getting him started is a bigger issue.

Our DS7, like eco's, has an average PSI (with about a 30 point spread between it and VCI / PRI / WMI). At the moment, I think it manifests mostly with his writing and math fluency. He seems to be a slower writer than most, and math facts have not come easily. His reading fluency "exploded" from non-existent to advanced in a matter of 1-2 months, though.

I'm not sure if this is due to his PSI or some of his traits that seem to point in the direction of stealth dyslexia.

Hi Sue,

I apologize for responding a day late and most likely not responding in time before your meeting, but I've spent a bit of time mulling this topic over and not sure quite how to articulate my thoughts on it! Two of my children have relatively low PSIs - one had an extremely low PSI score and a huge discrepancy in terms of SDs of difference; the other had a lower relative gap, yet in reality is the most impacted in terms of a challenge that impacts academics.

Personally, I think using the term "low processing speed" is confusing and somewhat meaningless. I see "processing speed" as a term that has a very specific meaning in terms of a WISC subtest, but not a well-defined meaning in terms of how a person functions. That discrepancy in relative score on the WISC can be due to a huge number of different root causes, so it's really most important (jmo) to understand what's driving the reason a student scores low on a particular type of subtest and then to be able to describe that and how it impacts academics when you advocate at school.

It also helps a lot (again, jmo), if you have some type of recognizable diagnosis that can explain the gap. I realize not everyone is going to have that - but if you have a student who's had ability testing, seems to have symptoms that are causing issues with academics or otherwise at school (or just in life in general), and *hasn't* had further testing to determine why there is a gap, I feel that's extremely important in order to help the student (I realize you've already btdt :)). Without a specific diagnosis and without being able to explain the *why* behind challenges, I've found that it's somewhat easy for teachers or other adults who don't really have a background in testing to think "low processing speed - everyone can be slow" or "low processing speed - another way of saying not motivated" etc.

I hope your meeting goes well today - keep us posted!

Best wishes,

polarbear

For a while in elementary school, my son started to stutter just a bit, and we think that was related to his processing speed. We likened the processing issue to a funnel: he's got all these thoughts and information swirling around in his head, but a small funnel he's got to get them through to get them out. So sometimes, there's a bottleneck as he gets his thoughts out. As he gets older, he seems to have figured out his own workarounds, but he's still relatively slow and careful at everything he does.

Hi all - and thank you so much.

Polarbear - never too late! My meeting isn't for a couple more hours, and anyway this probably won't be the last time I tackle this. I was like you - kept mulling it over and couldn't figure out how to express my thoughts. And as you referenced, we did really, REALLY extensive testing to try to sort out what was going on. The neuropsych assessed him as stealth dyslexic. But I doubt "stealth dyslexia" will qualify as a recognizable diagnosis, since the school doesn't even accept "dyslexia" as a qualifying diagnosis. (They've re-worded it so that a student has to be below grade level performance.)

DS has symptoms that ping in SPD, ASD and ADHD. But our painfully detailed assessment didn't turn up any of those for him. Sometimes I do think it would be easier to get help if it had. Instead, I'm standing there with "stealth dyslexia," low-average PSI that is more than six (6!) standard deviations below his VCI, and the dismissive opinion that DS is "smart enough to know better."

But the funnel analogy (thanks Syoblrig) and the low-hanging fruit (thanks eco) and the lovely "deep thinker" (thanks daytripper) add nicely to aeh's awesome explanation. I should emphasize how fortunate I am that the school is willing to work with DS and us. It's just that none of this is easy to explain in a way that won't fall on deaf ears because we do live in a Special Snowflake community.

Two further notes. George - DS did the same thing last year a couple months into first grade. Not reading to fluent reader in just a few weeks. Crazy.

And eco - DS is the king of low-hanging fruit and obtuseness. Yesterday he wrote a curse word on the bathroom wall because he thought other kids would think it was funny. Bless the principal for understanding he did it out of isolation and loneliness - and for helping him get that this is NOT the right way to make friends. Now if I can just help her understand more about why he feels that way!

Anyway - thanks again,
Sue

Oh gosh, we went through a horrible curse word thing at about that age. I have never been so mortified (nor have I ever tried so many useless interventions). OT but FWIW, the most compelling argument I ever used with DS about this was that even though the kids laugh, they will probably feel uncomfortable about it and tell their parents, who will then think he isn't a "nice" kid with "nice" parents.

Good luck in your meeting! This stuff is really hard to explain. I never even understood until recently that the PSI on WISC (V, anyhow) is essentially a test to see how quickly they perform "pencil and paper tasks." I think there is more to it than that, really, but the NP simplified it to that degree in her report.

As far as loneliness goes--ONE good friend can be a lifesaver. I hate the themes of loneliness and isolation you mention. Thank goodness your DS has you.

Thanks I've found this helpful. Having my son diagnosed with low Processing Speed (low average) and reading these posts of other parents describing low processing speed makes me wonder if perhaps I have low processing speed as well.

The struggle I've always had that make me think this is I can't "think on my feet" very well. I'd make a terrible stand up comic. I'm always 5 minutes behind on conversations particularly arguments/discussion with more than one person involved. It's not that I don't get what they are saying right away but that by the time I figured out how to respond the conversation has already moved on. And because I'm still thinking about how to respond I'm not 100% listening to the direction the conversation is taking. My observation is my son is the same way and I think this has really gotten in his way socially in the past.

Back from my meeting. It was interesting and will be helpful I think.

Principal asked several questions that led me to believe she was listening. At first, the biggest struggle was, "I get that he feels uneasy in kid-to-kid interaction, because it feels unpredictable and scary. But I don't get why this would cause him to go on the offensive, or do such silly things. So I don't know how to help him stop himself."

We worked through DS's unshakable belief that he is going to fail at social interaction, and SHE pointed out that he probably sabotages scary interactions so he can "hurt them before they hurt me." And she immediately recognized that some of his ridiculous behavior is a failed attempt to make friends by being funny. She's a little notorious for pranking colleagues, and I saw the stunned look in her eye when I pointed out that sometimes, DS thinks he playing a prank, not being mean.

That led her to shake her ahead and remark how DS is having troubles that he shouldn't face until he's more grown up. Subtle stuff like the delicate line between a mean trick and an April Fool's joke, and how it's different for every person in every setting. "Little kid society should just be so much simpler than this." But she also remarked that she often talked to him almost as a peer about human interactions, trust, friendship, social pressure, loss, etc.

I think she ended up baffled, but thinking hard about how to help him. And one of her last points was "You just can't talk to him the way you talk to other kids. He just doesn't reason or think the same way they do." I think I'll have to take that as a win.

Thanks all for your help.