his coding score was not a 1. I believe his coding score was a 5. His overall processing speed score was and 87.
While they aren't as low as 1, those scores can still be significantly low for a 2e child. My ds had a coding score of 8, and processing speed around 100, but still has significant fine motor issues. The key is - you can't know what's causing the discrepancy from the WISC on it's own. Having achievement testing at the same time such as WJ-III etc can help give clues re what's up, but again, it is not going to point to the cause of lower subtest scores without additional information. Neuropsych exams will typically include follow-up testing to help pinpoint the root cause when this type of discrepancy is observed - tests that can tease out fine motor vs visual challenges, tests of executive function etc.
DS was primarily tested for giftedness for a decision to be made whether or not his sometimes Attention issues were related to ADD or just SPD and over excitabilities. They didn't 100% rule out ADD, but said it is most likely overexcitablities.
What look like attention issues are sometimes children who are dealing with LDs or other issues that are preventing them from accomplishing the task they are being asked to perform. There were adults in both my dysgraphic ds' life and my vision-challenged dd's life who were convinced they had ADHD prior to their real daignosis, totally based on their behavior. DS looked like he was never paying attention in class, dd couldn't sit still. Neither one of them has ADHD, and the symptoms that looked like it disappeared when we found out what their real challenges were and accommodated/remediated the challenges. I believe the same logic applies to what is often thought to be overexcitabilities.
What I don't understand is how if he was already seen by a dev opt, why they wouldn't have picked anything up if there was an issue?
My guess is there's a chance that his vision is changing as he grows. That's why I mentioned how quickly eyesight can change in young children previously. Might not be that, but if you're seeing suggestions of a potential vision issue, I'd just keep in mind that vision changes can occur quite quickly in young children.
Best wishes,
polarbear
ps - in your original post you mentioned that symbol search was "closer to average with a 9". A score of 8 for coding and 9 for ss are actually quite similar - a difference of 1 in a subtest score isn't considered to be statistically significant. It also makes me wonder if vision isn't at least a piece of the puzzle.
