Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Improving Processing Speed ?

I definitely do think you can improve processing speed with time and practice. The brain is so plastic that it is difficult to imagine that you can't.
My son at age 6 had a roughly 45 point spread between his PSI and other scores. We have done piano, competitive swimming, and lots of flashcards. He has written into his IEP (which is for hearing loss) that he can have extended time on tests, but he has never used it.
Flash forward 3 years- is he the fastest kid? No. It still lags other things. BUT- with alot of work and practice, he can complete timed tests appropriately (OLSAT, STAR test, SCAT for CTY). I do think he will have trouble competing at high level math competitions if speed is an important factor.
so... practice, practice, practice.

My eldest DD's PSI declined from 7.5yrs to 10yrs. On paper. I think at 7 she just did the test as fast as she could and didn't care about neatness etc. Or possibly even accuracy. At 10 she had perfectionism and anxiety in the mix too. She had OT assessments at a similar times as well, and her handwriting improved on all measures (against age peers both times). Which is to say that at 7.5yrs her handwriting was below average in all measures and by 10yrs it was above average for neatness and marginally above average for speed. She's still not fast, but she's not that bad and her writing is very legible and fairly appropriately sized. I personally don't think her actual processing speed is any worse than it was, it might be better, but given that she has ADHD-I I am not going to complain about a low score qualifying her for extra time.

I think that the WISC PSI subtest are very easily skewed by personality and can pick up such a wide range of issues that it is really hard to pinpoint whether it really means anything real, and if so what. Is it anxiety? If so is the child usually anxious or only about this test? Or most tests, but not school work? Is there a vision problem, a co-ordination problem, an attention problem, an actual physical problem with handwriting? You don't get any of those answers from the WISC, only a hint that you need to investigate something.

My 2nd DD is actually quite co-ordinated, has good sensory integration and is reasonably attentive, but physically cannot hold a pencil well without a custom brace and special pencil grips, this might be why her PSI score was 50th percetile, but she also just plain refused to finish the test and got a perfectly average score in half the available time, which the tester would not have mentioned on the report had I not brought it up. The tester seemed to assume that this was all DD could figure out - hello, she did each item perfectly twice, she feels she has proved mastery, she's not unable to figure out what to do, you didn't emphasise that it's a race, or that she has to do as much as she possibly can, you only told her what goes where, she's shown you that she understood the instructions, it's a really boring test and her hand hurts so she's done.... She's also not a fast kid, but I don't think the PSI score she has tells us anything real at this point in time...

The child you are describing here though is a child that sounds like they need a full neurospsych evaluation to me.

Also - I could be wrong but I believe that by your child's age the PRI subtests are timed - which means that if whatever caused the lower PSI was also at work during the PRI tests then their actual visual spatial reasoning ability is quite likely underestimated by that 135.

Thanks Grinity for writing up such a treasure trove of information. I dont think DS is a perfectionist but he is definetly is the slow and steady type.

This is such a beautiful anology.
I hadnt thought of this maybe a timer for each task will help him. I should try it tomorrow.
This reminded me that DS has a great sense of humour. He loves comedies and laughs his head off during movies that he drowns out the next bit of conversation that follows. His creative writing assignments at school have all been funny - juvenile humor nothing subtle ;-)


Thanks Grinity - thank you for being so helpful. I will pursue the route of getting an eval from a neuro psychologist.

Glad to hear it - hopefully nothing will show up, but so worth knowing.

Your Pedi is a good place to start. Best Wishes,
Grinity

We were referred to our neuropscyh by our pediatrician, and our insurance did cover most of the cost (not all insurance policies do - but there is a chance it might!). What I would tell your ped is this:

"He has been frustrated with school work this year and has had complaints that he takes too long to complete his work."

Show the ped the testing you have, and the discrepancies, and explain that since your ds was being tested for gifted only, the psych doing the testing didn't have any explanations for you re the discrepancies, and that since the testing you've researched and found that those discrepancies may be playing a part in your ds' frustration with schoolwork.

Also let your ped know about any other concerns such as lack of organization in daily life or delays in motor skills or anything else you can think of. BUT - don't worry about over thinking how to convince your ped - just letting him know that your ds is frustrated with schoolwork combined with the score discrepancies is enough to warrant a neuropsych referral.

polarbear

First I have to apologize for bailing out on this discussion - we had guests who were staying with us for a few days and it got hectic.
Coming back to your post,
The test she showed me must have been the WJ III Nu then (DS was given WSIC IV and WJ III). I have yet to educate myself on the different tests so I must have confused both of them since we were going back and forth between the tests at the end of the session.Sorry for the confusion.So he maybe at a happy place in LA/Reading at school. I havent heard him complain about Reading much ;-)

Here are his WSIC subscores
VCI
Similarity 13
Vocabulary 13
Comprehension 12

PRI
Blockdesign 14
Picture Concepts 15
Matrix reasoning 18

WMI
Digit Span 13
Letter Number Sequencing 11

PSI
Coding 8
Symbol Search 12

It would certainly be sweet to see him get his love of learning back - I look forward to that day!

Those look like comfortably MG scores to me with the two outliers being the 8 and the 18. Two scores that fall outside the range of typical aren't major cause for concern, though. Speed doesn't appear to have impacted him on block design terribly either although I would leave room for the assumption that the block design test is a bit of a low ball for him.

I'd venture to guess, based on the PSI subtests, that visual scanning isn't so much of a problem for him as is the physical act of writing. If a 2e issue is at play, I'd be more inclined to investigate dysgraphia than visual problems.

You are echoing my thoughts here. When I wrote about yelling at him in the morning to hurry up I had also written that now I feel terrible for having done that. I deleted that line thinking I need to focus on him and not my feelings here. Thank you so much for bringing it up. Yes Now I realize I havent been helping him at all. All this is new to me so I have a lot of learning to do. I grew up in an environment that was totally oblivious to such issues. Either you did well at school or you didnt and were labelled stupid or asked to work harder to catch up. I heard about things like dyslexia for the first time when I came here to the USA. I am trying to change my ways and educate myself on this. Last weekend DS did a double take and looked at me strangely when I sympathised with him about something. He seems to realize I am on his team now. keeping my fingers crossed :-)

Another great anology for me to remember.


Yes I am rather overwhelmed with all the information that is out there and more so with looking at Ds's actions in a new light.
Baby steps for now. Thankfully school will be done in a few weeks so we will have time to ourselves and one struggle less.

Very interesting. I will be sure to look into it. Thanks

I am planning to get an appointment with his Pediatrician soon for a referral. Hopefully we can get some answers.