Originally Posted by suevv
Hi all,

Lots of our kiddos have very low processing speeds relative to VCI/PRI. DS7 is one - he has a 94 point difference between VCI and PSI.

I wonder if any of you could offer good words/analogies to explain the struggles this can cause? I'm having a meeting tomorrow where I may offer some info about DS's assessment results. But I'm struggling to put this impact into words. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Sue

Hi Sue,

I apologize for responding a day late and most likely not responding in time before your meeting, but I've spent a bit of time mulling this topic over and not sure quite how to articulate my thoughts on it! Two of my children have relatively low PSIs - one had an extremely low PSI score and a huge discrepancy in terms of SDs of difference; the other had a lower relative gap, yet in reality is the most impacted in terms of a challenge that impacts academics.

Personally, I think using the term "low processing speed" is confusing and somewhat meaningless. I see "processing speed" as a term that has a very specific meaning in terms of a WISC subtest, but not a well-defined meaning in terms of how a person functions. That discrepancy in relative score on the WISC can be due to a huge number of different root causes, so it's really most important (jmo) to understand what's driving the reason a student scores low on a particular type of subtest and then to be able to describe that and how it impacts academics when you advocate at school.

It also helps a lot (again, jmo), if you have some type of recognizable diagnosis that can explain the gap. I realize not everyone is going to have that - but if you have a student who's had ability testing, seems to have symptoms that are causing issues with academics or otherwise at school (or just in life in general), and *hasn't* had further testing to determine why there is a gap, I feel that's extremely important in order to help the student (I realize you've already btdt :)). Without a specific diagnosis and without being able to explain the *why* behind challenges, I've found that it's somewhat easy for teachers or other adults who don't really have a background in testing to think "low processing speed - everyone can be slow" or "low processing speed - another way of saying not motivated" etc.

I hope your meeting goes well today - keep us posted!

Best wishes,

polarbear