Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Wisc score VCI - PRI difference, and achievement

I am a teacher so perhaps I can offer a different perspective. I have often seen students who are exceptional readers who do not do as well on measures of reading comprehension. People who have excellent verbal skills are constantly using language to derive meaning. They are regularly synthesizing info to come up with the big picture, they do the same thing when they read. They are identifying with the characters, deciding how the plot relates to real life, trying to understand hidden meanings but not paying attention to minutiae (which is usually what a reading comprehension test is asking for). I don't think her reading comprehension is necessarily a weakness, I think the abilities that make her exceptionally skilled at verbal reasoning actually make tests measuring reading comprehension harder. My guess is if you asked her open ended context questions it would be clear that her reading comprehension is very good. The other standby is that executive functioning is often more related to math ability than much of what is measured in IQ testing, maybe that is where she excels. Thus, explaining the difference in her standardized achievement test scores.