Hi, everyone. I am new here, at least as a registered user. I've lurked around a bit in the past, though, and gained some valuable insight in the process.

I'm finally registering and posting because I need some experience and guidance to help me navigate this IQ test craziness. I finally gave in and got my son (now 8) IQ tested. I'd resisted because, well, I knew he was brilliant, but he's also twice-exceptional. He has some serious ADHD-type issues. I say ADHD-type because our psychologist (who did the testing) isn't convinced he has true ADHD per se, only that he has clinical inattention/impulsivity issues. I was worried he wouldn't be tested to his potential, so I never got it done. But I started feeling recently that my reluctance was doing him a disservice. So I got recommendations from other parents and found a local psychologist who works with gifted kids.

Well, she tested him on the WISC-IV, and today DH and I met with her to get the results. He topped out on the VCI in two subtests (vocab and similarities) and scored only slightly lower on the comprehension subtest (a 99.6 percentile with scaled score of 18, rather than >99.9 as on the other two). His overall perceptual reasoning scores were not as high, though he topped out the Matrix Reasoning subtest.

However, his Working Memory score was really out-of-whack. She said seeing WMI lower in gifted kids isn't unusual, but his was three standard deviations below his VCI and two SD's below his PRI. She said this was more than notable, and advised us not to really pay attention to the FSIQ because of this discrepancy. (His Processing Speed tests were lower than VCI and PRI, too, but only one or two SD's lower, which she said was notable but not totally unexpected, and she doesn't give a lot of credence to that metric with gifted kids, because they're actually somewhat penalized for deep thinking.)

I came home and did some research on all of this, and I'm not really sure what to make of all these scores. She was particularly concerned because the discrepancy in the WM score resulted in a FSIQ of only 135, but she feels like he needs to be in programs for profoundly gifted kids, and she knows those often start qualifying at 140. She said some programs will accept his composite scores from VCI and PRI as evidence of extreme giftedness...but of course, I'm looking at these thinking that those scores are too low because he topped out on several of the subtests.

So, I guess what I want to know is what you all would do in my situation? Should we try to find someone else to test him using the Stanford-Binet? I know there are "extended norm" scores for the WISC-IV -- is this a better solution? We of course paid out-of-pocket for this testing, so that is a consideration. I am not unhappy -- I feel like we got really valuable information from the testing: basically, that his working memory deficits -- compared to the VCI and PRI, anyway -- are substantial even in the gifted community. (His Digit Span subtest was a real issue -- he was in the 25th percentile for that one. With letter-number sequencing, he at least popped up to 63rd percentile, though his WMI was actually below average at 97.)

Has anyone else encountered discrepancies this severe? Do you have advice for what I should take away from this in terms of his overall abilities? The psychologist was adamant that I should really look at the PRI and VCI to measure his actual intellectual ability, but when he topped out there...what does that mean?

I'm kind of in a tizzy about all this...I would deeply appreciate any guidance from the more seasoned navigators of this tricky testing field.

***Editing after initial posting to add another question***
I just found the WISC-IV Test Report 4 that shows how to calculate the GAI. His GAI score is 153. Should I just chill out and go with that?

Thanks so much!

Alyson

Last edited by alyson; 02/24/10 01:05 PM.