Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Interpretation of scores - 2e?

Hi,

We had a testing (SB5) done a few weeks ago. The child surprisingly wasn't much interested doing QR part, so wasn't even trying to answer most of the questions, so I was told QR score is probably not responding to his real potential, but otherwise the scores suggest 2e.

The scores were as below:

NV Fluid Reasoning � 18 V Fluid Reasoning - 15
NV Knowledge - 14 V Knowledge - 16
NV QR - 11 V QR - 12
NV VS - 18 V VS - 18
NV Working Memory - 14 V Working Memory - 9

Can anyone help interpreting the scores and suggest where should we move with this info for any further testing?

TIA

Welcome!

These are very nice scores, generally speaking, with the exception of the QR and WM sections. Even if he wasn't interested in QR, I would be cautious about interpreting all of that as noncompliance/lack of effort, as that is two separate subtests, with multiple sections, that he did lower on than the other composite areas. And the two subtests are quite consistent with each other. So it could be real, or not. In addition, the other area with weakness is WM. Of the five composite areas assessed, the two which are usually most closely associated with mathematical achievement are QR and WM. But of course, that's not absolute, either.

Beyond that, you would need additional information, including academic achievement, to assess 2e. Are there IRL concerns that led you to this testing?

Thank you!

Yes, non compliance at school, DS6 wants to do everything is his own way, in his own timeframes (everything has to be perfect and thus he can be slow), teacher was struggling with him a lot last year. New teacher and school this year - she is more understanding and gives him choices, but is still struggling.

With this scores, we are struggling with reading or decoding words in particular and attention (or boredom, hard to differentiate at this point), so paediatrician requested IQ test before we test for anything else as school suspected giftedness in VS. And his mathematics is not bad for his age, but is weird after 13-15, e.g. 9+6=33, why? 9-12, 31 (instead of 13), 32, 33, but his class isn't working on additions over 10 at all yet. He says he is using fingers or other things to count by imagining them in his head.

His IQ report suggests a possible learning disability and I'm just not sure where to go further except for his paediatrician, who wasn't sure either. Feeling a bit lost :-( His paediatrician is certain that his issues at school will resolve once the school changes something and makes learning more challenging and interesting for him. But I want to make sure that this is what will happen, as DS's anxiety is quite bad and I want to do something to make him feel better. He hates himself for being not like everyone else and he thinks he is actually stupid, because he is different. I didn't even know that he feels different to everyone else.

I gather that you are not in the USA, so you may have different special education regulations and services where you are. Your school may have a school psychologist or educational psychologist who can conduct further testing, such as academic achievement, memory, and even emotional/psychological. That would be one avenue. Another would be to ask your pediatrician for a referral to a neuropsychologist, who could do similar testing, and possibly additional measures as well.

His negative self-concept and perception of himself as stupid actually have some diagnostic value of their own, with regard to learning disabilities. They suggest that he is aware that there are skills which "ought to be" simple for him, which mysteriously are quite challenging--a response to the gap between his intuitive understanding of his high level of cognition, and inexplicable (to him) obstacles (aka the learning profile that could be described as learning disabilities) to demonstrating that cognition in ordinary activities.

I can't help at all with the score interpretation, but as the parent of a 2e child with a learning disability, I'd caution not to assume that the "doing everything his own way", wanting answers to be perfect etc as perfectionism or a personality trait. It's possible these are indications the work he's being asked to do is tasking an area he's challenged with. It's easy to think that it *looks* like a student is being purposely slow when we know the student is a bright kid but aren't aware of a challenge. My dh and I knew our ds was quite bright because of the things he communicated to us verbally when he was very young - so when he was in early elementary and refusing to do certain things in the classroom we assumed he was bored, and when it took him a long time to write out assignments we assumed that was perfectionism. We were making the best assumptions we could based on what we knew at that point in time - but once we had his diagnosis it was easy to see that it was the LD challenge that was causing the slowness and reluctance to start some types of classwork.

Best wishes,

polarbear

The school doesn't have educational psychologist, but she is pretty good helping him deal with his anxiety, but can't help with 2e issues.

I had a meeting at school yesterday and their gifted and talented coordinator suggested to check him out for dyspraxia and asd, as his characteristics are more correspondent with asd than with add/adhd, for example. She has worked out a plan for now, so we'll see how he goes with that, particularly with 2 years acceleration in one of the subjects. They don't have much experience with giftedness at over 98-99% from my understanding and even less experience with 2e, but they will try to help him and accommodate him, which I was happy with.

polarbear, he is slow doing things he is good at as well, or can be slow. Like he will draw and redraw a drawing he is working on and it can take him 3 days to make it the way he wants it to be. I can't say that he is slow all the time doing particular tasks, he can be slow one day and much faster the other day doing similar things. He does want to do many pages at once. E.g. once he starts doing mathematics, he wants to do 3-5 pages, not just 1 page. And same with writing, thus transition from one task to the other is normally challenging for him and takes him quiet a lot of time to settle down, by the time he is settled, the class moves on to the next task and he wants at least another 40-60 minutes doing his 3-5 pages of work.