OK, I am going to try to respond to your many excellent questions and ideas--but I am a bit challenged with this interface, as I am new and not particularly interface savvy. I need to read up on how to get those nice quotes in boxes, etc! I apologize in advance for the ragged formatting. Oh--and I am also abbreviation challenged, though I am figuring out things like ds and dd!
And before I say anything else--Geofizz, I'm delighted if my questions have spawned a thread that's useful to both of us!
About this: "did your ds have any other testing or just the WISC? Did he have any type of achievement testing (WIAT or WJ-III) and did he have any follow-up tests of visual-motor integration or executive functioning/fine motor etc? These are things that are important (jmo) to determine *why* the coding and symbol search scores are so low - it could be fine motor (as you've noted a slight issue) or it could be something entirely different - vision for instance. Once you know *why* the score is low you can work toward remediating and accommodating."
This makes so much sense and I can't tell you how irritated I am that the extremely expensive and highly recommended neuropsych person did NOT do a lot of the follow-up tests that folks on this thread have suggested! She concluded that my son has poor VMI based purely on watching him--but she supposedly saw him do things that neither his teachers nor we parents have ever witnessed (use his non-dominant hand to guide his writing hand), so I am dubious about the quality of her observations.
The one useful thing she said about the coding test was that my son was looking back and forth between the "key" and EVERY SINGLE symbol that he had to "fix." I don't know what that means though--maybe that he couldn't keep the symbols in his head? That would make sense, as he is not a visual thinker. And it certainly would slow him down and account for the incredibly low coding score. I believe he got them all right--he was just really really slow.
She DID do the Woodcock-Johnson tests, but I'm not sure what I should be looking for. Process speed, cognitive fluency, visual matching, retrieval fluency, decision speed, and rapid picture naming were all weak. (Does that cluster make sense to anyone who knows this test? Also--caveat--my son can decided that he doesn't really feel like doing things and he is not particularly persuaded by an adult thinking that he should, so I always wonder when he scores poorly on tests whether it's an accurate reflection of his capabilities. That said, I believe the WISC processing score issue, even if the absolute number is off. It is just so far off of the other items, there's gotta be something to it. Also, when I looked at examples from the WISC subtests, it rang true to me that he'd do especially poorly on the coding part.)
As for the other parts of the Woodcock Johnson test, he scored at a grade equivalent of >18 for numbers reversed (AE >22), 7.3 GE for calculation, and--get this--5.1 for writing samples. His spelling, writing fluency, broad written language, cognitive efficiency, and written expression were all between 2 and 3 (grade equivalent).
It is so ridiculous that I am writing all of these scores on an internet chat board rather than having had them explained to me properly by the person who did the test! I am very grateful to all of you who are helping me with this and am growing increasingly ticked off at the disappointing neuropsych experience!
Do any of the following tests address anything that's covered on the CELF or TOWL or anything else you're asking about? If so, do you know what I should be looking for?
CVLT (California Verbal Learning Test)
TEA-Ch (Test of Everyday Attention for Children)
Test of Problem Solving (TOPS3)
Wide range assessment of memory and learning (WRAML2)
I don't think there's anything remarkable in the TOPS3 and the WRAML2 results. As for the TEA-Ch, the scores are all over the place. Hmmmm...Maybe because of varied interest? We ran the report by a special ed person (a friend), who did not think he has ADD, despite those scores. I can't remember what her reasoning was. She might have said that it was really clear from the report that when he is interested, he has no trouble paying attention.
I have no idea what the TOPS3 scores mean. I have the printout of the results, but the report has no discussion of them.
Grrr....
As for my son's attention to his work, I don't think it's so much that he doesn't know where to begin--I think he is often thinking about something that is far more interesting to him than the task at hand.
Vision is fine, though he did have a tracking issue a couple years ago. We worked on that and it got a lot better, but it still could be somewhat of a problem. (The optometrist said he was OK at the end of the vision therapy work, but his friends certainly can track a ball hanging on a string much "cleaner" and faster than he can!)
He says it does not hurt to write, nor does his hand get tired. "I just can't think of what to say."
About this:
"he can get the thoughts out a-ok if he's asked a question about something factual that he knows - but when the writing prompt is open-ended he struggles - and he says at those time he "has nothing" up there in his head"
I don't think we have asked him to write facts. My guess is that he would have a lot less trouble with that. Thanks for the idea! I really don't think he has THAT much trouble with the writing per se; it's the preceding thought process that's problematic.
Thanks also for this idea:
"when our ds was in 2nd grade, we thought his challenge was all about writing, because he sounded so danged smart when he talked. We eventually found out (around 4th grade) that the same types of writing assignments that tripped him up in class (no ideas what to write) also weren't something he could do verbally either - we just hadn't really seen that connection when he was little."
Again, I GREATLY appreciate your incredibly generous and thoughtful replies! I hope I can repay the favors as I stick around on this website and hopefully can help others.
