Hi folks. Apparently, when asked to name a similarity between horses and cows, DD said "they both can lick boogers out of their noses with their tongues", which is incorrect because horses generally can't lick their nostrils. Would the marker care? Does the answer have to be factually true? I have a feeling DD may have answered more than one question in this way, trying to make her teacher laugh...

It is my understanding that a properly trained evaluator would say something like "tell me another way they are the same." I'm pretty sure that the answer has to be on the list to be marked as right.

Ahh, that's interesting. Thanks Kai!

Yes. Although if it actually is factually correct but not on the list, it's still clinically interesting.

When I took an IQ test at... 9? (a very, very long time ago) the first similarities questions was on apples vs peaches (or maybe apricots). After a string of steadily more complicated answers and more "tell me another way they are the same" from the increasingly frustrated evaluator she finally broke down (after "both come from flowers with 5 petals and 5 sepals", IIRC) and told me "fruits! they are both fruits!!!".

I was flabbergasted (although I tried not to betray my scorn) at how stupid the questions/answers were for what had been pitched to me as a test to see if I was smart "enough".

The rest of the testing proceeded smoothly enough, once expectations on both sides had been properly recalibrated.

I usually preface by explaining that some items may be easier, and some may be harder, and that both of those are normal experiences.

Also, Sia, FWIW your evaluator should have given the teaching cue for the first item after just one or two queries, instead of querying to the extent that she showed frustration. I've had the same experience of too much specificity and complexity at the same time on this type of task--from postdoctoral fellows.

I was allowed to sit in during one of my children's earlier IQ tests. The first question they were asked is "What is a sock", to which they answered "Something for your foot", delivered with quite a lot of personality and eliciting a chortle from the psychologist. My child then proceeded to try to use the same format for every answer, which became more and more inappropriate. I was quite appalled at how long this was allowed to go on for, and that the psychologist seemed unaware that it was her own initial response that had lead my child to answering for entertainment value (especially in the face of such boring questions).

It might not have gone on *that* long. I was around 9, a perfectionist, and took not being able to answer the question very personally . The evaluator (a school psychologist) wasn't exactly upset, more like she wanted to help but couldn't... until she broke down.

Looking back it was fairly hilarious (even though I didn't think so at the time -- I was a pretty serious child).

My sympathies. I am not a professional in this field, but a correct answer should be scored as such. An individual taking a test shouldn’t have to second guess the test creator’s expectations. The questions should have gone through a more rigorous quality control process.

This is what makes aeh's job fascinating, isn't it? You can learn so much more about the child than just whether they know what a sock is

Yes! The fun part is how fascinatingly unique each person is, which can sometimes be highlighted by standard tasks, but certainly isn't limited to them.

And to the question of item tryout: these tests are actually pretty rigorously designed. The point of all the nonstandard responses we've been discussing (that might or might not be formally credited), is that highly nonstandard children generated them. The test is just one tool for understanding the child, which is why good evaluators always interpret the test results in the light of the whole child. (Which is also why, btw, for all that I can contribute some of my thoughts on test interpretation, anything I present is just an hypothesis to be tested against what is known about the child IRL.)

Your comments in this forum are very impressive and have clearly been of great value to many. If only all professionals in your field were of similar calibre.

It was a frustrating experience to watch my eldest being tested at age 3. I had a strong urge to shred her assessment report and only refrained because the IQ estimate did support early school entry which had been the main aim of the exercise. The psychologist who reassessed her at age 9, and also assessed DS at age 4, was exceptional. Her verbal comments vividly stand out in my memory, including that she was sure DS’s quantitative reasoning (the section for which his percentile estimate was lowest) was an underestimate. At 15, as she predicted, he is an exceptional mathematician. He even has a paid job performing quality checks of mathematics resources. Not only has he picked up errors in draft answers which Uni students have missed, he value adds by editing questions to eliminate ambiguity (which often would only be perceived by someone with knowledge beyond the level of the material) which is technically not within the scope of the job’s requirements, but somewhat relevant to this thread.

EM, how wonderful that your DS has the opportunity to use his math gifts in this way, especially as he is seeing, tangibly and early, that they have value in multiple contexts!

And yes, a lot depends on the clinical skills of the evaluator, which is, of course, why in-person one-to-one assessment is still considered the gold standard. (Now ask me how my profession feels about developments in assessment practices resulting from the advent of remote learning!)

One of the things that is so tricky about this, is that I now know we should never have been allowed in the room when during the testing with that first psychologist. But had I not been, I would not have been aware of SO many red flags (which were confirmed by her report). She seemed quite unaware of the ways she was impacting my child's mood and behavior. Had completely forgotten various events. One subtest my child had completed the entire subtest perfectly in the allocated time. She actually said out loud "I've never seen that before!". Which was a worry in itself, on multiple levels. But also, when the report came and the score for that subtest was 17, I was curious. I called and asked, she had no memory of any of it until prompted (but did then recall, and so was curious herself and went and looked it up, and confirmed that it had been a "perfect" score, but was scaled due to age). This seems like an appropriate time to note in the report that a 17 was the ceiling score due to age (I have various other reports with notes of precisely this nature).

Because I had inappropriately been allowed to sit in the room, I was very certain we needed to try again with someone more experienced with gifted children.

Just last night I was discussing with my child's psychologist how worried everyone had been about therapy by zoom/skype etc, but how wonderful they had found it. That there had been so much benefit from seeing the child in their own environment. But we did discuss that testing was obviously very tricky remotely!

So, then I shall ask... have you yet administered a test / assessment remotely by videoconference?

I have not, and still feel quite ambivalent about embarking on it, should I be called upon to do so. The entire field is in a quandary about teleassessment (as distinct from teletherapy), because very few (that is, none) of the gold standard instruments have been properly validated in this format, and the few instruments that were designed for teleassessment aren't among the stronger ones. The available data on teleassessment also is based on proctored formats, with trained proctors, because the original idea was to increase access to specialists in remote or rural locations--which were presumed to at least have teachers--not to evaluate people in their homes, with all kinds of distractions, possible spoiling of responses one way or the other, and untrained family members as the likely only available proctors. Not to mention inconsistencies and inequities in access to reliable internet.

On the pro side would be pragmatism. If at some point this becomes the only way we can conduct evaluations, then there may be situations where incomplete or flawed data is better than none.

I did find it hard to imagine how tele-assessment would work successfully. I hope you & your colleagues can develop appropriate ways to get through/round these restrictions.