Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional New Here with a Question about 2E

What are the parameters to classify a child as 2E?

I have always known my son was bright but when he started 1st grade he started showing signs of an attention disorder according to his teacher. In second grade the complaints about his attention continued and he was slow finishing math tests. She requested that we retain him in 2nd grade so that he would "mature" and be "able to finish work in a timely manner" and I refused because I didn't feel retaining him when he was otherwise on grade level (other than a low fluency score) would only exacerbate his "focus" issues.

In his elementary school they use worksheets for most subjects and he is slow to finish them and even slower if he knows there will be 9 or 10 of them that day.

In 3rd grade the complaints about his focus became more frequent and again he was slow to finish math tests and worksheets. Finally I requested testing. The school brought in an outside psychologist who specializes in LD diagnosis and who does evaluations often.

His WISC IV scores were:

Full Scale IQ: 119 (90%)

Verbal Comprehension Index: 132 (98%)

Perceptual Reasoning Index: 121 (92%)

Working Memory Index: 110 (75%)

Processing Speed Index: 85 (16%)


She also diagnosed him with ADHD. She said that his attenion difficulties are from external influences (what is going on around him) and from internal influences (his own thoughts). He gets distracted with some tasks because they make his brain take it to higher levels. For instance: when the psychologist tested him she had him read a list of words as part of the test. Halfway through he stopped and said to her: How do you think we got language? I mean who created this symbol (pointing to a letter) and called it an "a" (or whatever it was) and then this symbol (pointing to a different letter) and called it a "b". And then how did they put these symbols together to form the word that represents something we know. And then there are different symbols in Spanish and Chinese that mean the same things as us but in different ways. How did this all begin and how did they pass it on? Meanwhile the psychologist is saying: please just read the words. haha

Speaking with special education teacher friends they have never seen such a huge discrepancy between the Verbal Comprehension/Perceptual Reasoning and the Processing Speed as my son's WISC showed.

So would he be considered 2E?

This years teacher (4th grade) took some time to get onboard with his diagnosis and to stop calling him defiant and to stop saying that he is making a choice not to finish his work in a timely manner. We do have a 504 plan that allows for extra time on tests and assignments and to have large assigments broken up into sections/allow him to do less problems as long as he gets it (which he does...the psychologist said it takes my son maybe only 5 problems to master something when it takes the rest of the class 20 problems). Things have been better in the last 2 months he has actually been finishing work and focusing better in class since the teacher started to use the strategies listed in the 504 plan but I dread starting over in 5th grade with a new teacher. New teacher = teacher who doesn't understand why someone so obviously smart can struggle so much in school so they try to fit his square peg into a round hole.

I'm no expert but your son looks like he is 2e. I'm sure that the testing experts will chime in but I think that with such a huge discrepancy between his PSI and the rest of his scores that they should not have reported a FSIQ. Did the psychologist give you his GAI, General Ability Index, which is based on his VCI and PRI? You can calculate it yourself if you were given the subtest scores see
WISC-IV Technical Report #4: General Ability Index
www.ksde.org/Portals/0/.../gifted/WISCIVTechReport4.pdf
You may want to repost your question in the identification and testing portion of the forum.

Looks 2e to me - I'm on my phone at the moment which means I'm typing challenged but fwiw here are a few thoughts - from the parent of two 2e kids:

1) it's important to understand what's driving the dip in processing speed - it could be a number of things, fine motor challenge, visual challenge etc and you need that info to develop a good and appropriate rt of accommodations. Extended time is a bit of a throw-it-at-every problem and hope it works accommodation.

2) does he complain at all about handwriting or does his handwriting appear either sloppy or slow? Have you tried letting him do his assignments via keyboarding? Have his teachers tried giving him the option of oral answers on timed tests and does that improve his scores?

3) Did the school offer any kind of SLP or OT screening?

4) most of us 2e parents eventually have private eval'd because the info given by the school is not as detailed as it could be and leaves us with unanswered questions. Private neuropsychs will also usually add additional testing to determine the cause of discrepancies like you're seeing.

Gotta run - hope that makes sense!

polarbear

This sounds a lot like my gifted 2e child. She's off on tangents a lot. She had significantly lower WMI and PSI scores than VCI and PRI, though, and I understand that the WMI is often impacted by ADD although I wouldn't say that his not being super low indicates that it isn't ADD.

I have ! My oldest had a 94 (42nd percentile) PSI score @ 7 and VCI at the 99th percentile. My youngest had a 142 (99.7th percentile) VCI and around the 50th percentile for PSI and WMI. FWIW, my oldest is not 2e but my youngest is. The difference is that my oldest had high scores in all indeces except PSI and she had somewhat wonky scores due to anxiety at the time even within her higher scoring indeces; she refused to complete some tests and got really low scores and others that topped out the test.

I'd say that knowing it to be 2e is more of an art than a science. Someone might look @ my older dd's profile from 7 and say 2e, but knowing the kid and seeing her performance over time, she isn't 2e so much as she was a stressed kid coming off of a really hard school year when she was tested. My 2e one looks totally different. Inconsistent performance is a hallmark of ADD. Mine is definitely highly inconsistent to say the least.

His GAI certainly should have been calculated with the discrepency btwn his scores, too. You can do it yourself using this chart if you have the scaled scores. My rough guess would be that it would come out around 126 which is the 96th percentile. That may not mean much more to his school but it may be enough to qualify him for GT services b/c it surpasses the 95th percentile mark that many schools use.

Thank you for replying.

I was not given his GAI score but I figured it out using the link you guys posted.

His GAI is 130 and 98%

with a confidence level of 124-134 at 90% and 123-134 at 95%. I clearly have no clue what a confidence level is so my wording might seem weird to you. haha. I just copied all the way across the chart.

His subtest scores were:
Similarities: 16
Vocabulary: 17
Comprehension: 13
Block design: 11
Picture concepts: 17
Matrix reasoning: 12

.

Unfortunately our school doesn't have GT services.

Polarbear to answer a few questions: I'm not certain what is driving the dip in processing speed really. He doesn't seem to have fine motor skill issues or anything. He IS very analytical so sometimes he takes a long time on tasks like Math when you can look at a problem in different ways. He analyzes it to death to make sure he didn't miss anything. He also gets distracted by considering higher applications of the tasks that he is performing (like the word list). I'll keep thinking about it though and maybe something will jump out at me. He does have a delay at times when I read to him. He will laugh at a funny part after I have gone on to the next part.

He does complain about writing and his writing is sloppy though it has gotten better since his current teacher has been harping on it. He gets frustrated with the computer because it takes a long time for him to find the keys but we are working on teaching him to type now. His teacher DID mention that he was going to do his spelling tests and other similar types of tests orally but then never did. I'll have to ask him about that. It IS in his 504 plan to give assessments orally when appropriate.

The school told me that he didn't seem to have any issues to them that warranted SLP or OT screening. I did request that the SLP staff evaluate him because I was concerned by the delayed reaction when I read (and the teacher also noticed that at school) but the psychologist felt that he didn't have a processing issue and wouldn't need to be evaluated by SLP.

I think you're right...I need to look for a neuropsych. This Psychologist was an independent evaluator...she isn't a school psych. But I wonder if there is another underlying issue here.

Absolutely, vehemently agree with all this. Nicely put, MON.

DeeDee

Master of None:

His coding score was a 6
And symbol search was a 9

They Administered:
the WISC IV
Woodcock-Johnson III
BASC-2 (parent, self, teacher)
Vanderbilt diagnostic parent rating scale
Vanderbilt Diagnostic Teacher Rating scale
Connor's rating scales (teacher/parent)

Through this evaluation the psychologist formally diagnosed him with ADHD but should I have other tests done that haven't been listed?

You hit the nail on the head when you said "If you know what to call it, you will be able to describe it to the teacher who will be able to look it up, and it will go much better than just saying your kid is slow and has a hard time focusing". That is exactly what I am after. I decided to start here to see if the 2e designation fits him. Mainly, I wasn't sure if his scores land him in the gifted category. At the very least I could explain THAT to them but yes, if there is something else that I should look for I will definitely try to explore other avenues. I don't have a lot of money so that is an issue unfortunately.

I also sent a reply about his GAI but I believe it went to the moderator for approval so it should be here when they get to it.

In the reply that is coming I said that I found that his GAI was 130 (98%).

My dd's ADD dx was based on the Connor's, BASC, wildly erratic achievement tests (MAPS, etc.), the IQ profile, her profile on the GORT (an oral reading test in which she was in the 4th quartile for everything except reading speed; she was in the 1st quartile for speed), and a psych meeting w/ dd and me and talking about what she was experiencing. It sounds like your ds had enough rating scales and tests done to get a reasonable dx.

I don't know that having the dx has been a magic bullet, though either in terms of fixing the problem or getting the school to better see that there is a problem.

Re whether your ds falls into the gifted category, I'd say yes. He appears more moderately gifted (MG) than highly or profoundly gifted, but he may be more gifted than the IQ scores look at first glance. Did he have a lot of scatter within subtests? For instance, my oldest, who like I mentioned didn't test well for reasons other than 2e, appears fairly MG when looking @ her composite #s, but even in indeces where her composite #s were high-ish but not outstandingly so, she had some HG+ scores. PRI, for instance, came out around the 95th percentile if I recall correctly & had an 8 (25th percentile) and a 19+ (99.9th percentile).

Kids with wild scatter like that may be more highly gifted than the composite #s, which average the highs with the lows, would indicate. Also, if he does have ADD, which sounds like a distinct possibility based on what you've posted, his scores on many parts of the WISC may be affected by his concentration and lowered accordingly.

That score profile certainly suggests some kind of disability. My son has a somewhat similar profile: his scores are here.

FWIW, in addition to giftedness, he has motor dyspraxia, problems with visual processing and visual-motor integration, Asperger's Syndrome/NVLD, sensory processing issues, and a formally diagnosed Disorder of Written Expression. He does not have ADHD. The WISC and most other IQ tests are really blunt instruments with respect to looking at learning disabilities. Significant score scatter can be a "red flag" that something unusual is going on, but it isn't really diagnostic of anything by itself without confirming results from other, more specific, sources of information.

An evaluation with a professional who is familiar with 2E kids, not just LD kids and not just gifted kids,would probably be really be helpful.

Edited to add: on the Conners, my son scores like he has ADHD-inattentive, ADHD-impulsive, and ADHD-mixed. After spending nearly 10 hours with him, watching him work on a variety of tasks, the psych who evaluated him said that in her opinion, the behaviors that caused the positive ratings on the Conners were almost certainly not ADHD, but were related to his giftedness and to his Asperger's. (I agree with this assessment, and so does he.)