Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment FAST processing speed?

(Realized I was threadjacking another thread so started my own.)

So I hear a lot about how gifted kids almost always have lower processing and working memory scores. To me, this begs the question: so, then, who scores HIGHly on these measures, and why? I assume that there are kids out there getting 120-140+ on these subtests, right?

I was, for instance, wondering if higher scores on these measures tend to be more typical of bright high achievers with lower, more even test profiles. Could it be? Perhaps the high processing speed/high memory kids are the "not quite gifted" kids who miss the program cutoff but are very strong in school--conventional high achievers? I knew some kids like this in school and they seem to have gone on to do very well in life...

I don't actually have any test results on DD's processing speed. (She was tested with the RIAS, which I think doesn't really measure it.) But I suspect that it's high. She's very fast with stuff and has few of the issues in school that many gifted kids seem to have. Basically, she speeds through her work, gets it all right, and then draws pictures on the back. (The work's too easy, of course. But too-easy work doesn't seem to preclude these issues in other kids.)

BTW, I don't really know much about all this IQ stuff, in case that's not obvious. I do find it interesting, though.

I don't know that all gifted kids have low processing speed or memory scores. Maybe those of us who have kids with that profile just complain about it more b/c it presents challenges.

I was given two IQ tests over the course of my lifetime and came out at or above the 99th percentile on processing speed both times. However, I also had high scores on VCI and PRI or whatever the adult equivalent is. My working memory is above average, but not in that upper 90s area so I guess that is my weak area. I think the kids ate my brain -- lol!

I do know a very few kids with high WMI and/or PSI scores that are not supported by higher than average VCI and PRI scores and they are much higher achievers in a school setting than one would predict based upon IQ. I would think that having those supporting skills would enable one to do the work quickly, not make mistakes, and get very good grades assuming you are of at least average intelligence. Kids who look like that make up a large majority of the kids in our local GT/accelerated classes b/c they have the high achievement (grades, NCLB test scores) to get in.

I don't think I've seen any evidence to suggest that "gifted kids almost always have lower processing and working memory scores." You may hear about a lot of kids with that profile on boards like this one, because discrepancies in scores can lead to bottlenecks that can cause issues for children.

And I may be in the minority on this, but I think that the WISC-IV tests for processing speed and working memory are not the last word on speed and memory skills.

You know the old saying there are people who can see the trees and those who can see the forest. I look at it as there are people who can see the leaves, trees or the forest. The academic world is mostly made up of skills related to those who can see the leaves and in some cases the trees.

My opinion is the IQ and processing speed tests are biased toward primarily leaf related skills. Those who do extremely well on these tests will often do quite well academically, but have limited potential to deal see the trees and to a greater extent the forest.

Whereas those who score fairly high, but not at the top end may be shifted more into the tree range. In this case, they are more rounded.

Those who score low may in fact be very good at forest type skills, but as these are not tested in the academic world, their skills are often overlooked.

I don't think it is quite as simple as this.

I'll agree with you on that one. My dd12 probably does truly process much slower than her other abilities, but I suspect that my dd10's PSI score came out lower b/c she made a ton of mistakes. Attention to detail is not her strength. I wasn't told that was the cause for her scores (it's just my suspicion), but she really is a pretty fast kid who is highly error prone.

"the kids ate my brain". I'm going to start saying that irl ,cricket

I've never been officially tested on processing speed, but I'm a forest person, and that just adds to my processing speed. WM is my bottleneck. DS14's PS is glacial, but his WM is WOW! He can even see organic chemistry equations doing their little dance on the blackboard of his mind - and I am SOOO jealous of that....

I don't think that most gifted kids have some kind of bottle neck - but plenty have one, and a few have two. It's more fair to say that the assumption that WM and PS will be high if the more 'g' loaded subscales are high just doesn't hold up to real life.

Smiles,
Grinity

By "lower," I don't mean "lower than average"--lower than other scores? I thought it might be a function of these kids being harder to serve, too, but a quick Google seems to reveal that the conventional wisdom is that processing speed really is often relatively low in gifted kids...or it's low by the measures commonly used, anyway. I agree that these measures may be off in some way.


I was wondering just this--are these the kids who score high on achievement and not as high on IQ?

I realize that you meant lower than their other scores, but I would still question whether most GT kids have lower PSI and working memory scores. Personally I don't believe that. I think that you hear that a lot online because parents tend to worry when some index is lower than the others. I don't think it's uncommon, but I doubt that it's most.

I would not be surprised, however, to see kids with higher memory and speed scores doing very well in school. Memory and speed are certainly valuable skills in an academic context.

Yes, they are kids who have higher WMI and/or PSI (115-125ish), around 50th percentile scores on PRI and VCI, and who score in the 90s on achievement tests -- assuming that their parents are telling me that truth, that is. One of the moms of one such kid has told me that she thinks the IQ is off b/c her kiddo achieves so highly, but she's also tested IQ more than once and gotten pretty consistent results that look like that.

eta: I am, of course, hypothesizing that there are a lot more kids in the local accelerated programming who fall into this category. I doubt that many of them have taken IQ tests. My hypothesis is based upon a few things:

*I've had more than one GT coordinator tell me that she believes that most of the kids who are GT ided are high achievers, not gifted;
*Both of my kids' schools have between 16-25% of the kids in the GT classes and/or GT identified. Our neighborhood is truly not that skewed from the norm, so these classes have to be filled with someone other than gifted kids and I know that the kids in these classes are at least performing in the upper 10% on achievement tests or above, for the most part;
*DD12, who is a very bright kid and likely a 1 in 100 or so type, was so drastically different than the majority of these kids that she's needed a lot more acceleration than I'd think she would need if she were in class with other gifted kids (even if they were somewhat lower on IQ; the large majority of her age mates who are GT ided appear a lot lower in terms of IQ -- yikes, I feel like a jerk for saying that!).