Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Need thoughts on WISC-IV, WJ-III, Visual Issues

Your clarification on Cancellation makes it clear that, actually, 3 out of 4 PSI tasks received exactly the same score, in the Average range. The last trial of Cancellation is the only task that scored below average. That makes it less likely that it is something specifically about Cancellation that pulled the score down, and more likely that it was fatigue, as that was the actual last task completed. Most students score slightly better on the structured condition than on the random condition (factored into the norms, of course). This does not, of course, change the general finding of relatively low processing speed.

As to diagnosis of dyslexia: most evals involve identifying two areas of deficit--an aspect of reading performance, or achievement (e.g., phonetic decoding, fluency, comprehension), and a cognitive process that is associated with reading mastery (e.g., phonological processing, phonological/working memory, retrieval fluency/automaticity). In an exceptionally high cognitive individual, these relative deficits may still lie in the average range, as the individual may be able to use cognition to compensate. This does not mean they have no deficit in that area; it may be that they are able to generate normative performance at great cost to higher-level functions and energy drain.

Relevant measures of achievement may include the tests already mentioned, and others: GORT-5, KTEA-3, PAL-II, WIAT-III, WJ-IV, OWLS-II (tests vary in quality and range of reading measures).

Process measures may include

1. measures of phonological processing, such as are found on: CTOPP-2, PAL-II, WISC-V (ancillary), WJ-IV, some speech-language instruments (a standard starting point for speech/language evals is the CELF-5).

2. measures of phonological/working memory, such as are found on: CTOPP-2, WRAML-2, WISC-V, WJ-IV, TAPS-3, D-KEFS.

3. measures of retrieval fluency/automaticity, such as are found on: CTOPP-2, WJ-IV, WIAT-III, KTEA-3, D-KEFS.

Although it can be helpful to give the evaluator some guidance with regard to your concerns, it is also good to keep an open mind, and let the assessment lead the diagnosis, as the obstacle is not always what one thinks it is.