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    SJ1 Offline OP
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    DS5 took the WPPSIV test recently. There is a more than 3 standard deviation between his scores. Am totally clueless where should I go from here. We have put him on wait list for neuro-psych evaluation. Suggestions what else we should be doing to help him

    FSIQ 133

    Composite Scores
    Verbal Comprehension 146
    Visual Spatial 135
    Fluid Reasoning 124
    Working Memory 113
    Processing Speed 91

    Verbal Comprehension
    Similarities 17
    Information 19

    Visual Spatial
    Block Design 19
    Object Assembly 13

    Fluid Reasoning
    Matrix Reasoning 13
    Picture Concepts 15

    Working memory
    Picture Memory 11
    Zoo Locations 13

    Processing Speed
    Bug Search 10
    Cancellation 7

    Any suggestions\comments welcome.

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    aeh Offline
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    Welcome!

    First of all, these are nicely strong scores all around, confirming, I'm guessing, your suspicions that you have a bright little person on your hands!

    Secondly, yes, there are some statistically quite divergent index scores. We can talk about some of the hypotheses these might generate, but it's important to remember that there's a huge difference between statistical significance and clinical significance---and functional significance. I've had many students whose function in life is much stronger (or weaker) than their formal testing would predict.

    And now to these diverse scores:

    Context: 1, none of them are below average, so we're already starting from relative strengths and weaknesses, rather than absolute weaknesses. 2, your child is still quite young, so some level of instability in scores is still expected over the next few years, for reasons including variable testability of young children, and the wide range of asynchronous development that is typical of children in the preschool years--so don't be surprised if some regression to the mean occurs on future rounds of evaluation (high scores become a bit less high, and low scores become a bit less low, with everything trending closer to average than otherwise).

    Since variable attention and effort is pretty common in preschoolers, I should also note that any relatively lower performance could have resulted from that, which is something that only someone who actually saw him complete the test would have any idea about. So keep in mind that the discussion following assumes that these test scores are actually representative of true skills, rather than just because DC was tired, hungry, or distracted by a fly in the room.

    Strengths: your DC has several areas which are well above average, but the strongest by far is language-based thinking, which is in what most would consider to be the profoundly/exceptionally gifted range. The visual spatial area is also in the technically GT range, but results from two very different performances--one at the top of the Extremely High/GT range, and the other in the High Average range. Since fine-motor development is one of the areas that often is on a time-table different from some other aspects of cognitive development, it's possible that slightly different fine-motor coordination demands on these two tasks affected how he performed. The other large difference between the two is that BD has a model (3d or 2d), while OA does not. So the problem solving process is a bit different organizationally between the two. It appears that the conditions for BD are a lot more conducive to success for your child than those for OA.

    Fluid reasoning is strong without being nominally GT. (Some call this the optimally gifted range, since it's plenty cognition enough to do almost anything one wants in life, and can be the sweet spot in many classrooms for being the top student without constant frustration over lack of challenge.) FR is a pretty good predictor of conceptual thinking and some aspects of mathematics achievement.

    Relative weaknesses: The two areas that aren't striking strengths both fall into a larger domain called cognitive proficiency, which has to do with how efficiently one can manage tasks and produce a volume of work. They are sometimes considered lower-level cognitive skills, because they have less to do with abstraction and conceptual thinking, but they can still have quite a bit of impact on how smooth and fluent the learning experience is. It's also not unusual for GT learners to be "only" age-appropriate in these areas, both because people are internally diverse, and because sometimes it's not a priority.

    So interpretively, these might be completely unremarkable findings, since a fairly high percentage of GT-identified students have working memory and processing speed in this range, and don't seem to have any noticeable effects, plus or minus, from it.

    Or they might be notable, but result from asynchronous development (e.g., just because one's reasoning development is far ahead, doesn't mean one is any better than the next preschooler at holding a pencil).

    And finally, it's still possible that there is some IRL meaning to these, such as a delay or deficit in visual tracking, or auditory processing, or something else.

    Do you have any IRL concerns about your child? What prompted (if you don't mind my asking) the original evaluation? Was it a problem or question that might shed light on the resulting scores?


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    SJ1 Offline OP
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    Hi Aeh,
    First of all, a big thanks for moderating and providing insightful replies to the forum posts. Really appreciate you taking the time to help distraught parents like me support their kids.

    We had an intuition for both gifted & ADHD for my son. It probably runs in my husband's family, though most of them are happily un-diagnosed. I wanted to wait till he is 6 years old for formal evaluation. However, the school we are interested in for his first grade required IQ score which prompted the testing. His test taker did confirm that WMI & PSI were relative areas of weakness, not just distraction. I do agree that some of the scores should stabilize a bit as he grows.

    I have been reading about WMI & PSI - some things are similar to his profile - he can't follow multiple directions at one go, misses out on social cues. However, he can do multiplication mentally, is quick at Spot-it. IRL concerns involve his unwillingness to go to school (it's gifted-friendly and the teacher is providing him acceleration but it's not project-based). He holds it together in the school but acts out when home. He is always sad. He is social and plays well with friends but not too many. Group activity classes (swimming, soccer, gymnastics) always have been an issue but thrive with private lessons. His K-teacher recommended Occupational therapy recently for handwriting improvement and we have started looking into it.

    My main concern for this post was what you put "if there is any delay or deficit in visual tracking, or auditory processing, or something else". What should I be asking psychologists and therapists? Is there anything I can do to diagnose & maybe provide him with appropriate therapy so he is not compensating for them? If there is nothing much I can do at this stage, that's also fine by me.

    Thank you for listening to a clueless mother!

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    SJ1 Offline OP
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    Hi Aeh,
    First of all, a big thanks for moderating and providing insightful replies to the forum posts. Really appreciate you taking the time to help distraught parents like me support their kids.

    We had an intuition for both gifted & ADHD for my son. It probably runs in my husband's family, though most of them are happily un-diagnosed. I wanted to wait till he is 6 years old for formal evaluation. However, the school we are interested in for his first grade required IQ score which prompted the testing. His test taker did confirm that WMI & PSI were relative areas of weakness, not just distraction. I do agree that some of the scores should stabilize a bit as he grows.

    I have been reading about WMI & PSI - some things are similar to his profile - he can't follow multiple directions at one go, misses out on social cues. However, he can do multiplication mentally, is quick at Spot-it. IRL concerns involve his unwillingness to go to school (it's gifted-friendly and the teacher is providing him acceleration but it's not project-based). He holds it together in the school but acts out when home. He is always sad. He is social and plays well with friends but not too many. Group activity classes (swimming, soccer, gymnastics) always have been an issue but thrive with private lessons. His K-teacher recommended Occupational therapy recently for handwriting improvement and we have started looking into it.

    My main concern for this post was what you put "if there is any delay or deficit in visual tracking, or auditory processing, or something else". What should I be asking psychologists and therapists? Is there anything I can do to diagnose & maybe provide him with appropriate therapy so he is not compensating for them? If there is nothing much I can do at this stage, that's also fine by me.

    Thank you for listening to a clueless mother!

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    aeh Offline
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    SJ, sorry your answering post didn't get picked up earlier!

    A note just to clarify: I have no official capacity connected with the forum or Davidson--I'm just another parent, who happens to have some specialized knowledge.

    But I'm happy to offer what I can!

    In terms of possible concern areas, given the family history of ADHD, it makes sense to keep an eye on that. Lower WMI and/or PSI do have some association with ADHD. You already have a recommendation for OT from the kindy teacher, who should have a good sense for the level and rate of progress appropriate to his age-peers.

    The social piece is a little more complicated, since I can think off-hand of a few factors that might be contributing to the bit of challenge you are reporting there:

    1. processing speed &
    2. working memory. Regardless of eventual ADHD diagnosis, if his speed of response is relatively lower than other aspects of development, then he may be having trouble keeping up with the pace of social interactions, which includes cause and effect learning that children usually obtain from natural consequences. Impacts from processing speed also are consistent with being more successful in small groups than in large groups of peers, since it's easier to keep up. The same is true of working memory--if there are fewer children, there will be fewer moving parts to remember and attend to at any moment. That he holds it together in school but shows his stress at home suggests that he is working very hard using his higher-level thinking skills to compensate all day.

    3. fine motor. Given how strong his reasoning and conceptual skills are, I would not be surprised if he is experiencing some frustration at school at the gap between what he can think in his mind or express in oral language (especially that) and what he can produce with a pencil (drawing or writing). If he does have fine-motor delays relative to his age-peers, he has the added layer that he probably is thinking well ahead of them, but sometimes producing behind them. I'm guessing that is partly what is spurring his teacher to recommend OT/handwriting interventions. She can hear the stories he tells, but doesn't see the same quality on his paper.

    4. instructional mismatch. At the same time, he may also be experiencing emotional distress from schooling that is not sufficiently stimulating intellectually. Kindergarten is supposed to be fun and social, as well as laying the groundwork for academic success, and if he is working hard all day to meet behavioral and social expectations, but isn't getting some moment of relief in the form of academics that feel rewarding and like play to him, then it's not surprising that he feels like he needs to let off steam when he gets home from a hard day at work.

    Consider how we would feel after a day working at an incompletely satisfying job, with people for whom we had to put constant effort to stay on good terms. And that's with a full complement of adult coping skills.

    ...and I should add some suggestions:

    1. You are already pursuing OT, which should help with anything that is an outgrowth of handwriting delays. You might also talk to the OT (when you find one) about whether they are familiar with Zones of Regulation, which is a commonly-used intervention system for executive functions and self-regulation. (It could be used by professionals from a number of fields, but since it was designed by an OT, it's often something OTs are familiar with.) There might be some benefit for managing frustration and reducing meltdowns in peer social interactions or at home after a long day.

    2. Social skills training. This might be quite informal, such as consisting of you narrating social situations as you work through them yourself in front of him, or with him, to make explicit some of the cause and effect sequences. Or you could consider looking for/requesting a small social skills group with peers, ideally at school, facilitated by a trained staff member (preferably a counselor, psychologist, speech therapist, or possibly an OT).

    3. Check in with the teacher providing acceleration, as well as with your DC, to see if the nature and pace of accelerated content is both appropriate to his instructional level/zone of proximal development, and also appealing and energizing to him. If he enjoys small peer groups, perhaps there is some way to work in an occasional guest to his group, to recapture some of the social aspect of kindergarten learning. Of course, I know you are also considering a different school, so that might ultimately be a better long-term solution, depending on how well that school matches his need to learn.

    Last edited by aeh; 12/06/21 06:12 PM.

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    SJ1 Offline OP
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    Thank you, Aeh - you have given us a lot to think about and pursue. Appreciate your insights!


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