aeh - Thanks for taking so much time to review the scores. Having seen your many contributions to this forum, just knowing you think this all adds up is an enormous relief. We have the (rare?) benefit of results that feel like they make sense, so it helps to know you don’t see gaping questions so far.
You're welcome!
You’ve also made sense of the many outliers, which is really helpful to this LD newbie. I am starting to better understand the patterns and what they are trying to tell me. Those WRAML outliers were particularly bugging me, as what limited descriptions I could find of the tests suggested the two low score tasks were visual-spatial manipulations akin to block design, but done mentally. Your explanation makes much more sense. Would depressed memory scores in these areas in particular be expected, given the dyslexia findings?
It's more like the working memory weaknesses are in symbolic areas. Picture memory is basically okay, because those are meaningful images that she has to remember. Design memory is weaker, because they are not. And yes, often you do find lower memory skills in symbolic areas in dyslexics, which has some face validity, when you consider the role of orthographic mapping in fluent decoding skills (a slightly more comprehensive version of sound-symbol correspondence).
Which raises another question. Based on my attempts to read sub-test names it seems like low memory/ processing scores are more likely to be in visual rather than auditory areas. Am I misunderstanding? Our psych told us the opposite - that the weaker areas were tending towards auditory, thus re-enforcing the question about CAPD. Auditory processing disorder originally came up both because DD meets a lot of criteria (though these heavily overlap with ADHD, thus the tentative diagnosis there), and also because DD misheard some m’s and n’s in verbal instructions.
I would agree that the memory and processing weaknesses were largely in visual-symbolic areas. On the other hand, the CTOPP-2 results are consistent with auditory processing difficulties, even though they are mostly average/low average, because they are significantly discrepant from her verbal cognition.
And jumping in to another area where I have no idea what I am talking about…. the memory and processing scores are much lower than verbal ability, but still mostly pretty normal. Even the CTOPPs are still average/ low average.
See above comment.
The achievement scores, however, are much below. In my simple mind, it seems like there should be more relation between the functional and the achievement measures. Does this disparity reinforce the likelihood that there is also something else - like ADD or CAPD - going on? Or just that dyslexia doesn’t necessarily affect the things the WRAML, CTOPP and WISC can measure, even when it is having that much affect on achievement?
As I've implied above, dyslexia -does- affect the WRAML, CTOPP, and WISC results, just not in such a way that the normative scores fall far below average. This is because cognition affects pretty much everything we do, and therefore colors all the other test results. You can see that she employs as many cognitive strategies as she can squeeze in to support her areas of weakness by the striking difference between her story recall (meaning and context) and word recall (rote memory), and the notable, though much smaller, difference between picture (meaning) and design (abstract/not meaningful) memory. Undoubtedly, similar compensation is involved on the other tests.
FYI, I don’t see anything that looks at all like the “oral reading fluency” you mentioned wanting to see - would you expect it to be there, and might it be called something else?
I would guess they didn't administer it, after seeing the poor decoding results, figuring that they had enough information to document a decoding weakness without trying connected text. Oral Reading Fluency is the name of the subtest on the WIAT-III, so it should be pretty obvious, if it's there.
As for wondering how she does with idea generation and organization… well, like on almost anything, she does great on self-generated tasks. She’s incredibly creative, and loves to draw and invent stories in the form of improv songs. She’ll happily write (almost indecipherable) lists, menus and invitations to go with her games. On the other hand, her teacher is describing the page left blank for a 20 minutes, with nothing getting written, after spending two days discussing how they will start writing this particular work. As for organization, well…. the ADD shoe fits. But you may have specific kinds of examples in mind?
That's what I was wondering about. Sounds like organization and initiation are issues with written expression tasks--very common with ADHD. Lists, menus, and invitations are all short, and have a well-established, simple organizational template, so she doesn't have to organize them. Also, they either have a formulaic beginning, or just launch off with bullet points, so the threshold to initiation is pretty low. Plus, they're high interest tasks for her, which helps increase natural dopamine levels, thus temporarily inducing more normalized executive functions.
Now, the math side…. Hmm, I’m pretty blank here. I have a bit of a grasp of the kinds of remediation that reading and spelling will require. I have no idea if there is something equivalent we will need to do with numbers? Or how dyslexia may affect math development over the longer term? yikes. Whole new thought.
It often affects automaticity of numeral formation (just like letter formation) and math facts (most likely through the same underlying processing deficits that affect orthographic mapping). Also, some students have difficulty lining up math problems, and benefit from using large graph/square paper to help with the visual organization of math computations.
You do a good deed, and I come back with a hundred more questions. Sorry about that!
I only count eight.
