Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Improving Processing Speed ?

My DS9 was tested recently using WISC IV.He has been frustrated with school work this year and has had complaints that he takes too long to complete his work.
His scores were
VCI 114
PRI 135
WMI 110
PSI 100
The psychologist said that his processing speed is considerably lower than his PRI score.And also that the working memory and processing speeds are tied to each other. She suggested that he work on website like branskills.com and that will improve his processing speed. Has anybody used something similar to aid thier child? Has it helped? Its quite expensive so I would really appreciate any feedback. I realize its not really a 2e issue but I wasnt sure where to post this question.

It might be a 2E issue, I wouldn't rule it out, because I think with subscore spreads more than 25 (?) there is a concern. I think there are others who can give more thorough answers, but I'm not sure about the improving it thing. Possibly as part of a whole system of adaptations to support the child.

I'll watch this topic to see if anyone has had any luck in this area. I don't want to be the voice of negativity, but my older dd, for whom processing speed was dramatically lower than any of her other indices (all were in the upper 90s [percentiles] except for PSI which was something like 42nd) really continues to be a slower worker. She was tested @ 7 and is now 13.5.

She has learned some techniques to be as efficient as possible, although she still procrastinates and doesn't use them all the time, but as to whether her processing speed has actually improved as she's gotten older, I'd say probably not. It just seems to be part of who she is -- very deep, but not unusually fast.

We have not tried brain training, though, b/c I can't afford to waste money and I wasn't sure if they were really going to work. I've not seen any studies that indicate that they do save for studies that were not published in peer reviewed journals and which were done by the companies that were selling the products.

My dd I also wouldn't really consider 2e. I've got one who is and there is a distinct difference.

I would say, though, that my kiddo has managed to do very well in GT and accelerated classes and with a grade skip despite the speed issue. Some of it is b/c she is very able and some of it is probably due to greater maturity that she lacked at a younger age.

I think the websites might help or might not help.

I tend to see Processing Speed as basically fixed, however there is a lot that can be done to affect the overall length of time that tasks take.

Keyword: Automatisity

So I'd sit down with DS and ask him what are the things he gets caught up on over and over, and make a list, than rank the top three concerns, and look for something that that you can attack.

Example - perhaps getting out to school in the morning is a problem. The rate of neuron flow might be the same, but having a well oiled set of habits is so much more powerful than that. So brainstorm a list of possible 'habits' that might become automatic and speed up the process. At our house this meant buying more pairs of his favorite style of pants and shirts so that he can set out entire sets of clothing on Sunday for Monday through Friday. I used something like this -
http://www.amazon.com/Household-Ess...ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1337296598&sr=8-2

Make sense?

This is the kind of kid who might really want to work at memorizing those times tables in Math, or perhaps he can get accomidation to use a written out table of all Math facts in the classroom so he can continue to learn the content.

I've seen plenty of kids with WM/PRI gaps like this and PS/PRI gaps like this. Having both is a pain in the rear end, but still clearly overcomable. What 'worries' me more is the gap between Verbal and PRI. Clearly anyone with a PRI in the strongly gifted range with 114 Verbal is going to be frustrated in school, where the Verbal skill are worshiped.

It may be that his Verbal type skills are fine and his WM and PSI difficulties blocked him from expressing it to this particular tester on that particular day. Anyway,I'd want to be sure to spend as much time enriching the PRI strength as working on the other challenges.

If you wanna share his top 3 irritations, we can help brainstorm systems and habits.

If you wanna share his PRI related interests, we can help brainstorm possible enrichment activities.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Thank you for all your replies I am really greatful that you took the time to reply.
It confirms the thought I had that it is something that is fixed and cannot really be changed as such.
It could certainly turn out to be a 2e issue but the psychologist said to continue to watch over the next couple of years and if it gets worse to come in for a complete neuropsych eval she said a PSI of 100 is considered normal for boys his age.

Cricket2 I appreciate an honest response so no fear of being a voice of negativity. I have suspected the same which is why I posed the question.I am very glad to hear your daughter is thriving. DS is apparently doing fine in school too except for needing reminders to complete his work. He "Exceeds expectations" for most subjects as per his report card. But he hates school these days. I guess we are lucky that he is a people pleaser and tries to please his teacher tho home is a different matter. Would you mind sharing what are the strategies you use with your DD?

Grinity, those are some very good ideas which I wil be sure to borrow. DS struggles with his daily routine too. I had dismissed them as laziness before.
Everything from getting up on time to getting to the bus stop needs me pushing him. As you suggested I need to get a schedule down and enforce it everyday.
Its funny how you mentioned the multiplication tables - he had a hard time memorizing them but managed to clear the 3rd grade requirement this year.
As for the VCI - The psychologist specifically made it a point to showe me why his Verbal score was low. There is a section where the child is supposed to describe a picture in writing and ofcourse as I expected DS choose to write the least amount of words required.There were 3 blank lines for each picture and he hardly filled one line. He does the samething at school.His teacher has to ask him to redo it then he does a good job. I am not sure if its him just being lazy and trying to skate by with the least amount of work.
Another thing is that English is not our first language so though we speak English at home now our vocabulary is not as good as native english speakers. I mean we tend to use simple english words at home. Maybe these factor affected the score or maybe not. Also he qualified for the School Gifted Reading program based on his ITBS scores.
His top three irritations I would say are
1> Taking a lot of time to complete tasks. For example He knows he has to get to the bus stop at 8 but he will still take his own sweet time to sip on his milk or read a book even if its 7:55. I have to yell at him to hurry up. But I have to say he can be quick when he wants to - on field trip day last week he was ready at 7:30 ;-) so I guess he needs motivation.
2> He says school is boring.Everything about school is "stupid"(his favorite word) these days. Last month he begged me to homeschool him. Suprisingly he doesnt consider math as his favorite subject. I am talking to a math tutor who is a math professor and works with gifted kids. He is a gifted person too and he said he was slow himself so he understands DS. Hopefully DS will like him when he meets him next week. This might give him the enrichment he needs and bring back the love of learning.
We are also switching him to a new school that promises to focus on STEM. He is excited about that since they have clubs like Lego FLL. He wasnt too thrilled tho when he learnt that they have 2 periods of math each day.
3> He hates doing anything physical. Tried soccer and hated it. Swimming was fine until his coach moved him to a swim team now he hates it and considers it too hard.I am not sure how to cover this area because he definetly needs the excercise but is not sporty.

He loves building stuff like Legos. He assembles kits that are meant for teenagers in a few hours. He loves doing puzzles does not stop until he is done with it. Currently he is building a train set meant for age 14+. And ofcourse video games which he can play for hours if I let him.
Thank you for all your help.

I think whether or not processing speed can potentially change may be related to why it's what it is to begin with - i.e., my ds12 has a fine motor disability and his processing speed is significantly lower than his other scores. Based on what we know about the neurological nature of his disability, I expect it will stay where it is. My dd10, otoh, had one extremely low processing speed score when she seven, and we learned that it was due to a visual challenge which was correctable with vision therapy. We haven't had a reason to have her take another IQ test, but if she did I suspect her processing speed score would increase quite a bit.

I have heard (and been told by our neuropsych) that working memory is a score that can increase, and we've seen that happen with our ds12, without using any wm-targeted program. Our neuropsych says it's not uncommon (in her opinion) to see increases in wm as children get older (the increase for our ds occurred between 8 and 11 years old). We have friends who's school and neuropsych have both recommended CogMed for working memory.


Well - a psi may be "normal" for boys his age, but so would a PRI of 100 be "normal" - a PRI of 135 is definitely an outlier - so instead of looking at a PSI as "normal" it's more useful instead to think of "what is normal for kids who have a PRI of 135" - is it normal for them to mostly have PSIs of 100? Not really.

From what I understand, scatter > 1 SD in subtest scores is *not* "normal". It doesn't necessarily mean there's a problem, but when you see scatter in subtest scores like your ds has - there is the *possibility* of something going on that you might want to look into - doesn't mean for sure it's a 2e issue or that it's any cause for concern, but it certainly might be useful to know what is behind the scatter in scores, which is what you have the potential of learning through a neurospych evaluation. I also think that there's another piece of data that is equally important in this situation - your ds is unhappy at school and he's had feedback that his work is slow. As he moves up in school, the demands on his time and his workload will continue to increase, so if he is being held back by a relatively "low" PSI (relative to his other strengths) at some point it may impact him even more than it is impacting him now.

And, like Grinity, I'd also look into the VIQ vs PRI split. If it was me, I'd ask for a referral to a neuropsych - the neuropsych might agree that there isn't a problem, but otoh if there *is* something behind the discrepancy in subtest scores, you'll be glad you went forward with the neuropsych consult now rather than waiting. The other upside to a neuorpsych evaluation is that you'll (usually) get good advice on what programs you might want to invest $ in or time in to work with your ds and what programs are most likely a waste of time.

Best wishes,

polarbear

eta - we were posting at the same time, so I hadn't seen your latest reply when I added mine. FWIW, much of what you wrote about your ds sounds a lot like my ds, who had Developmental Coordination Disorder. Before he had his first neuropsych eval and we knew about the DCD, we attributed a lot of things to lack of effort, being not motivated etc (he too was slow to get out the door in the morning, slow at changing clothes etc). That doesn't mean your ds has DCD - but the things that you mention above are symptoms that are seen as bits and pieces of several different challenges (as well as being just perfectly normal for some very neurotypical kids). The sum of what you've listed though, jmo, is enough to seek out a consult with a neuropsych who can help you sort through everything to see if there is something going on.

We've tried a few things. One, in re to perfectionism, she tends to spend too long on things and has had to learn how to let some things slide when she doesn't have the time. She's in high school now so she can track her grades online. We've talked about the weighting system her teachers use so she knows where to place the most effort and has been willing to not do her absolute best on some projects b/c she has a very high A in the class and can afford to get a lesser grade. I've helped her figure out the lowest grade she can get on a given project and still keep an A with a little cushion. She's learned to let go some.

In regard to working at her fastest rate: She's checked with teachers as to how long assignments are supposed to take and then timed herself to see if she can get them done in that time. She's tried working as fast as she can and seeing how much she can get done in x minutes and then using that to estimate how long the whole assignment is likely to take.

She also tends to be distracted by noise. This isn't as bad as it was when she was younger, but even today she said that she got thrown a bit on a computerized French test b/c the girl next to her kept talking while she was trying to think. She hit "enter" too soon on a few parts and missed questions that she said she knew after hitting the enter key (she couldn't go back). We've tried to keep her working in her room where it is quieter if she needs to concentrate and she had a 504 plan earlier in elementary which included quiet testing environment and seating away from noisy objects like the heater and pencil sharpener.

Basically, we've tried to make the environment as conducive to success as possible, she's learned to do a good enough job at times and let go on perfection, and she sometimes pushes herself to work as fast as she can, but it still honestly isn't even close to as fast as someone with fast processing speed.

My son did a program through school called Fast Forward (maybe 4word??) It is considered a program to improve reading skills for most kids, but was done specifically to target processing speed and working memory skills for my son, who had a significant difference in his processing speed and PRI scores - similar to you child's. This is a brain training program, may be similar to the one recommended to you. I have noticed a great difference in his timed test math skills and his focus on completing some tasks. He was diagnosed 2e (pervasive developmental disorder) by a neuropsychologist in part based on IQ scores similar to your child's.

Thanks Polarbear! This is an excellent point. Another example that comes to mind is the child with excellent processing speed in life, who has a lot of perfectionist behaviors and gets a low score because they are trying to do the task perfectly. Or even a child with a good work ethic who has trained themself that 'slow and steady beats fast and sloppy' - who wouldn't want a child to learn that?

When I was a kid, the adults used to shake their heads on a regular basis and say 'slow as molasses in January' becuase that was the behavior that they saw. My processing speed is actually quite fast and one of the ways I compensate, but the overall picture of me as a kid was slow-slow-slow - a daydreamer, space cadet, etc. It turns out that there is so much ADHD-I (inattentive) in my family that it looks like normal to me, so it's possible I would have been diagnosed if I had been born more recently. What slowed me down in day to day life was my 'bottleneck' (not a true disability, just a place where my racecar brain had only tricycle wheels to ride on i.e. average for an average person, but a true PIA for me)
with Working Memory. Getting dressed, teeth brushed and fed in the morning is a great example of a complicated task with lots of little parts to juggle,track, and monitor. I recently took 20 minutes off of my 'get up and go to work' routine by not allowing me to leave bedroom/bathroom area until I was 100% complete in there,and not going back unless absolutely essential, and then moving through the house in similar fashion. What was I doing for those extra 20 minutes? I have no memory, but apparently a whole houseful of temptation is too much for me when I'm half asleep. Writing is perhaps the paramount of WM challenge - it involves supporting one's body in the chair, positioning the arms, hands, paper, pencil, thinking what to say, forming the letters, evaluating if the letters are being produced clearly enough, managing the spaces between words and the margins, Captiolisation and punctuation, spelling, subject/verb argeement, keeping on the main point of what one wants to say, oh yeah - what do I want to say? and what does the teacher want me to want to say?

So there is one example where a lot of slow behavior comes out of bottlenecked WM even for someone with plenty of Processing Speed.

(You might wonder why I think I have lightening fast PS even though I've never seen any of my test results. I sort of know because when I go to a movie, I laugh about 10 seconds before the rest of the crowd gets started. It also helps with reading between the lines to pick up on little things that are not directly stated.)

I'll type more soon, in the meanwhile, I've introduced the concept of 'bottleneck' which is a great concept to have when your kid has a profile like yours, also what WM is and how that can contribute to slowness, also I've surfaced the idea of what it's like to be bright with ADHD-I, (in my mind if the WM is 2 standard deviations behind the strongest other area, and can't be explained by any other reason, then that is 'by definition' ADHD-I, but I'm not a professional or a researcher, just a mom. In 20 years we'll look back and be amazed, or laugh)and the idea that challenges and strengths tend to group by family, and so looks both less impressive and less alarming to the parent who has a 'whole bunch more just like this one back in their childhood.'

Please ask about any questions that come to mind while reading this!

Grinity