Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Looking for experiences re: 60 pt splits

Hello all!

This is an interesting scenario for me, as I work in child assessment and am typically the one providing the answers to questions about test results. But I've come upon a particularly noteworthy profile, and was curious to know of similar real life situations in order to discuss with the parent the probable trajectory of their child's measured IQ, and possible reasons for the unusual discrepancy.
The child was 3.5, and given the DAS-II. The verbal composite was in the high average range (110-119), while the nonverbal composite was 170--the highest the DAS goes for that age. The child hit the ceiling on both nonverbal subtests (t-scores of 90 for both--again, the highest the DAS goes for that age). The child has no noted language issues, and the parents were not expecting this at all. They were expecting closer to the high average range.
Thoughts? Experiences? This was a fascinating situation, for me. Of course, I plan to use the SB-5 on this child to get a better, clearer picture of the child's cognitive functioning, but I had never seen anything quite like this before.

Thanks in advance!

I don't have any experience with that test or a gap that large but my DS had a verbal-nonverbal split both when he was 3 and 6 on the Weschler tests. (on the WISC he was around 115 verbal and 140 something non-verbal.) They thought the non-verbal score was an underestimate because one of the subtests for non-verbal ability wasn't accurate in his case due to motor issues and a brain injury...so I'm not sure how big of a split it really would have been had the results been totally accurate. I believe the lower verbal ability was partly because he did not want to answer the verbal questions due to a bit of test anxiety/shyness, but also because he is twice exceptional and has developmental dyspraxia/apraxia of speech and had some mild speech delays relative to "typical" kids (but huge compared to himself and his other abilities). The gap seems to be closing as he gets older (I believe verbal ability keeps rising to become more even with non-verbal ability). I have no idea what is going on with this other child, but it could be there is a subtle disability that is deflating the verbal score, he has uneven development, or he was just more focused or motivated for the non-verbal section. I don't think IQ tests done on 3 year olds are all that predictive, so make sure the parents understand that.

Why are they testing? Could you just recommend retesting at 6+

I've definitely warned the parents that IQs at 3 (really, under 7 or 8) are highly unstable. For these parents in particular, they're banking on it There's also the issue of the way that the DAS-II is formatted. 2.6 thru 3.5 have 4 subtests, while 3.6 thru 6.11 have 6.
With this information, the parents are understandably concerned about enrichment, and of course, that split.

My DD11 has these kinds of splits but in the opposite direction. Her last round of testing the evaluator said her numbers exist in 0.0% of the population. High verbal ability and comprehension with literally just about every processing issue there is. Her numbers were not as high as this child's though.

The main thing I have learned is unique scenarios require an open mind and out of the box thinking. This will not be a case of plugging the child into a preestablished formula or even reinventing a previously invented wheel. Getting this child what s/he needs will mean inventing a wheel. And then inventing it again and again. Because my DD is profoundly learning disabled we have focused on remediating as much as possible while enriching in ways that tap into her strengths. Only now is the gifted side of things starting to become a higher priority.

It will be important to gather a team of professionals that get it. And I mean *really* get it. Few people will encounter a child like this more than once in a career and to be effective they have to be open minded and willing to learn. This can be hard for folks who are used to being in the role of "expert".

I would also suggest trying to get a handle on basic social skills as early as possible. My DD's sweet, personable nature has helped a lot. This kind of split with a kid who is also annoying or unpleasant to be around will makes things very difficult. This kind of smarts can bring out a very unpleasant side of certain adults. As a parent I have had to develop a certain radar and be ready to intervene to keep DD from emotional/psychological Injury. Sad but true.

Mostly tell the parents to buckle up and get ready for a very interesting ride!

My experience with the DAS is that the Verbal Comprehension subtest in particular has some issues. So much so that when I used it routinely, I also used to substitute for it routinely (for upper preschool--no substitute allowed, of course, for lower preschool, which is your situation). On the old DAS, I actually wrote to Colin Elliott, and obtained a table he had developed for alternate raw scores that didn't include certain items from Verbal Comprehension and Word Definitions--meaning this was such a common occurrence that he had re-analyzed his standardization data to create an adjustment. This helped a bit, but didn't eliminate the frequently occurring difference between VC and Naming Vocabulary or Picture Similarities.

So my first question would be, were the VC and NV scores notably different from each other? That is, does this appear to be a real difference between Verbal and Nonverbal?

If the data suggest that it is a real difference, then my thought would be that the experience of the parents simply reflects the child's current verbal abilities. Not that surprising, as daily life provides many more easily quantified opportunities for assessing verbal development than that of spatial or abstract reasoning.

As to what it means--it could mean almost anything on the verbal end. As you know, at this very young age, it could easily be asynchrony. Perhaps the language abilities are late-developing compared to the motor abilities, and an assessment three years down the road will find verbal as high as nonverbal. We don't really have a good measure of verbal reasoning on this level of the DAS-II, so the test is really measuring vocabulary acquisition more than anything else. VC is mostly following directions, which does capture some listening comprehension, but not really reasoning.

I assume you've already considered the obvious factors (e.g., non-native speaker of English, hearing impairment). Or it could be a genuine language disorder. Way too early to tell.

On the nonverbal end, clearly there are some extraordinary spatial and reasoning skills present. How extraordinary is an open question. But you knew that.

Note: make sure you give the full SBV, and don't grab the Early Years version by accident, as the items administered in Early Years top out at the normal age 5 to 7 range (depending on the subtest), which may interfere with your use of the extended norms. If you don't have the interpretive manual (with norms for ExIQ up to 225) somewhere in your institution, you or your C-level supervisor can order it from HMH:

http://www.hmhco.com/shop/k12/StanfordBinet-Intelligence-Scales-SB5/id/1402248

My DD has a 70 point difference between some of her scores.
Her GAI is 170 (WISC extended norms) and her Processing Speed was bang on 100. I can't remember, off hand, the full scores though her GAI without ex-norms was 157.
For DD, she scored far higher GAI wise than we imagined as she always seemed to struggle to get an answer out, seemed to think for hours or just look blank.
Our Ed Psych suggested looking at ADHD so we went down that route.

My son's WISC-IV scores at age 7 were this way too--GAI with extended norms was 60 points above processing speed. Without extended norms it was a 55 point difference. I think his main issues with the processing speed subtests were a combination of poor fine motor skills and a lack of motivation.