Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Need help to understand WISC-V result vs. OLSAT

Hi, I have been browsing the topics here but this is the first time I post.

My DS is 9 year old and just finished 3rd grade in a good public school. He started to have issues in 2nd grade with anger management. The school recommended to have him tested for GATE. He scored 138 total in OLSAT with 142 in verbal and 126 in non-verbal at the end of 2nd grade.

We see a counselor specialized in gifted kids for about a year now. At the beginning consultation helped a lot but at the end of 3rd grade he refused to do homework and had various issues at school.

He is very good at math, 1st place in math contest at school level. He is also advanced in reading. Reading comprehension is probably one of his strongest traits. He has issues with writing, especially creative writing. We can extract complex ideas from him at home but he struggles to put ideas on paper by himself. DS is also seeing a speech therapist to correct pronunciation. He speaks at a very high speed so it is hard for his peers and teacher to understand him, which creates social issues.

All of the above factors prompted us to consider transferring him to a gifted private school and do a full neuropsychological test.

The psychologist won't have the full report until August. Since we are talking to the private gifted school, we asked for the IQ test portion only. The psychologist tested him on WISC-V and she says he is missing the gifted school admission mark by 4, meaning 126 FSIQ. My translation of her message is fluid reasoning >130
visual-spatial reasoning between 125 and 130.
verbal comprehension, working memory, and processing speed falling in the high average range, meaning between 110 and 119.

We can see working memory being an issue because of his poor executive function. Processing speed is also very possible to be a weak link because he sometimes thinks too much, which slows down his response time. What really surprised us is the difference in verbal scores between WISC-V and OLSAT. I understand that OLSAT is not an IQ test but DS seems to be very capable at understanding reading material, reasoning verbally, drawing inferences, etc. He will struggle with formulating ideas on the fly but I don't know if WISC-V tests that. I asked the psychologist what could impact the score, she ruled out poor attention, diminished effort, and problems with motivation and persistence.


Could someone help me to rationalize the big drop in verbal performance? Really appreciate your thoughts.

I'm not sure that is a "drop in performance". We all have strengths and weaknesses. My son's WISC-V results have a similar differences in various areas of ability.

There are alternate calculations other than FSIQ. My son is high in verbal, and low-to-average in processing speed and working memory, so the GAI is more accurate for his abilities than the FSIQ. The difference between his GAI and FSIQ is more than a standard deviation, so this is significant.

Check with the program to see if they accept any other index scores and ask the psychologist to calculate those indexes. It's worth a shot for just 4 points.

I am just bumping so the people who know won't miss it. I am not where you are but does the OLSAT allow more time?

Thank you for bumping it up puffin. I am not familiar with the test format and time allowed during Puffin. OLSAT is all multiple choices I believe.

FWIW, your WISC-V nonverbal results appear to be relatively consistent with the OLSAT. The verbal portion of OLSAT is a very different test from the WISC VCI, as it consists partially of following spatial directions, and partly of quantitative reasoning tasks, orally-administered, which are more like the WISC-V VSI and FRI, respectively. IOW, there is very little on the OLSAT verbal that overlaps with the WISC-V VCI. OLSAT is loosely timed (some parts are rigidly so, others are examiner paced), so it might benefit someone with high average processing speed (which is good, BTW).

If alternate measures of intelligence are options for access purposes, you might find that the composite number is more reflective of his VSI and FRI if you ask for a Nonverbal Index to be calculated, which would include VSI, FRI, Picture Span from WMI, and Coding from PSI, and exclude the VCI, and the Digit Span subtest of WMI. This depends, of course, partly on his performance on PS and Cd.

From what you've reported, I wonder a little about the possibility of some additional speech and language concern, beyond articulation and rate, perhaps in the area of expressive language. Sometimes the rapid rate is a kind of masking device for underlying language issues. (The language on OLSAT is entirely receptive in nature, whereas expressive language is required on the WISC.) Has he been fully evaluated by a speech and language pathologist, not just for articulation reasons?

Thank you aeh, that is VERY helpful.

I talked to the speech pathologist, she only did an articulation assessment, not expressive language. We will definitely look into testing him for overall language ability. I didn't even think of that but it makes a lot of sense given his reading and writing probably has at least 2-3 grades in gap.

I do want to add that we are a bilingual family. Do you think that could have penalized the score too?

Do you have an opinion about WISC-VI vs WISC-V? I didn't know the differences going into the test. An educational psychologist told me that I should have gone with WISC-VI because she believes many examiners don't have enough experiences to interpret non-conventional answers, especially for verbal comprehension.

Really appreciate your inputs.

I tend to think your family language environment does not explain the entire difference in verbal performance, although it certainly should be taken into consideration. It appears from what you've shared that he has probably been in immersive English education for the past three to four years, and had strong receptive English (at least) a year ago. For most non-disabled young children, that is enough to bridge most of the second language gap (although research does find that many learners are still working on academic language 7-10 years after entering the second language environment).

Regarding the WISC-IV vs WISC-V VCI, the two tests differ very little in this cluster (except that one of the WISC-IV subtests is now supplementary). Some items have been updated, while others remain quite similar. I would disagree that lack of experience with the -V is likely to have a significant impact on the VCI, unless the examiner is a particularly rigid one to begin with, in which case you would have more global issues with the accuracy of the results. This is actually one of the two indices that had the fewest changes. Anecdotally, I found the transition to be very smooth.

Actually, using the -IV instead of the -V would have weighted the score more heavily for verbal tasks, working memory, and processing speed, which probably would have taken the FSIQ down even further.

ETA: if you are concerned about second language effects, then it would be entirely appropriate to ask for an NVI to be calculated, as it may be less likely to discriminate against CLD (culturally-linguistically diverse) students in gifted program selection.