I have two sons who have very similar WISC-IV profiles except in the area of working memory. My younger son's WMI is about 40 points higher than the older son's. Their PSI scores are the same and quite a bit below average.
I'm sure there are other differences (one being the older one has dyslexia and the younger one doesn't), but the difference in their ability to learn is like night and day. The younger one is very much more obviously gifted.
I will respectfully disagree with the thought that "the younger one is very much more obviously gifted" simply based on his higher working memory score (please know I'm not picking apart what you've said Kai! And obviously I've never met your sons :)). Among my kids, my EG ds has a relatively low score on WM (I don't remember how much lower than his other scores), as well as a very large dip in processing speed relative to VIQ and PRI. My HG dd, otoh, has incredibly high scores on WM and processing speed - *really really high scores*. She absolutely is fast as can be with spitting out answers, memorizing math facts, computing math equations, answering questions, learning new concepts when taught something. She's a high achiever in school, and she's the type of kid that teachers etc tend to absolutely love and think of as classically "gifted". She *doesn't*, however, come up with the same amazing deep insights and out-of-the-box type reasoning that our EG ds does. Yes, ds doesn't move quickly, he doesn't spell well and he will never win a math-facts race... but the depth and type of insight he has is absolutely and profoundly gifted. I think that even with IQ there are multiple ways in which a person can be "gifted".
Why working memory tends to be de-emphasized here? I definitely see a trend here on these boards of lower WM scores relative to VIQ/PRI - which I think, as mentioned above, may be due to folks with 2e kiddos being on the internet searching for advice etc where parents of non-2e gifted kids might more often than not be sailing through life without needing to post online - perhaps. I also am sure I've read that the profile of relatively low WM and PS relative to VIQ and PRI is somewhat common in kids who score in the HG-PG range on the WISC rather than the other way around (higher WM and PS). In my completely unqualified point of view - high WM and PS give a person great tools to manipulate knowledge and pick up facts quickly, but it's high VIQ/PRI that give a person the ability to generate novel, unique, insightful, creative *new* ideas... and the ability to do that isn't dependent on doing it quickly or while doing 18 other things.
However, that's just me speaking from my limited experience parenting my own quirky kids
polarbear
