Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Help with the WISC IV test results.

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I always wonder about this sort of thing with the prepping that goes particularly in NYC-type places. I read one article about one of the tutor places parents send their kids to prepare for the test. The article specifically talked about how this child said to the tutor after so may sessions - "You don't need to tell me the directions I know what to do." I always wonder "do they prep the kids on how to not make it obvious that they had been prepped?" If not, isn't obvious all the kids have been prepped? Doesn't that invalidate results? Is it only the WISC that is spoiled by prepping? I thin kthe article was about the COGAT.

I couldn't "prep" my son ... He'd tell the tester right away. And anytime I tell him not to tell someone something then it becomes that he HAS to tell. The night before his OLSAT test I told him about the test - just to assuage anxiety and I told him it would be like his mind-benders and analogies book that he has done on and off with DH in the past(somehow DH got it in his that mind-benders and such help with critical thinking and got some book called mind-benders to do with him). Anyway, I told him I though the test would be like that. (I wasn't even sure!) Well, because they were concerned about his vision disorder and accommodations, he took the test with the school psych (instead of with the class) and he told her he practiced the test! She didn't seem concerned but I was really embarrassed. He never "practiced the test"! And he hadn't done the mind-benders book in like a year, I think.

This ends up being a really interesting question. For the record, I am an adult who took child IQ tests (most likely, just two separate administrations of the same Stanford-Binet L-M IQ test) by teacher referral at elementary school age. Much later, I had occasion, for online discussion of education policy, to begin reading about the enterprise of IQ testing in general. I eventually discovered some of the practitioner handbooks about IQ testing (note: NOT the actual test manuals) used then for current adult IQ testing.

Then, still later, I had occasion to take an adult IQ test. (The current test in that year was, if I remember correctly, the WAIS-R, but it might have been the WAIS-III.) As the test session began, I was asked by the test-giver, "Sometimes people have taken IQ tests before, or they've read about the tests so that they are familiar with some of the test items. Please let me know if any of the items we work on seem familiar to you, okay?" I told her up front that I did some reading about IQ testing and it might be possible that I'd find some items familiar. (The practitioners' guides to IQ testing are quite interesting in what they attempt to keep secret about test item content even as they introduce concepts related to correct administration and interpretation of tests.)

As I took the test, which I surely had never taken before, I did indeed encounter some items that were unfamiliar to me, and yet easy to figure out because of things I had read. I let the test-giver know as that happened during the testing. The test-giver, on her part, made sure to give me additional items from other, much more obscure tests. (It was years later before I figured out what test published before my dad was born was used to fill in for the Wechsler items in testing my vocabulary. That subtest is really cool.) If I remember correctly, the IQ test and accompanying memory test (the Wechsler memory test is actually designed to be given during an IQ test administration, so that the delay in recall is enforced by being busy with something else) demonstrated that I didn't have a memory issue to worry about--which had prompted the testing. The test-giver noted that there were some real difficulties in determining a valid WAIS IQ score for me, because of my recreational reading, but ventured a characterization of my general level of verbal ability based on the supplemental vocabulary items I was administered. Any responsible test-giver MUST note when a test-taker's performance is far outside the norm. To do otherwise, and especially when there is any doubt about standardized conditions of not having access to the test item content in advance, is a violation of professional ethics.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/02/u...e-faked-tests.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

I don't know about the original poster but when I "briefed" my son all I said was:

Someday soon, someone (and you will never have met this person before but the guidance counselor will introduce you) will take you out of class and work with you for a bit for day or two. You will do learning games and puzzles and small little tests. These activities are just so that we can all learn all about how you learn so that we can help you do the best you can in school. Try your best on every question and you are not expected to know every question but don't give up keep going. And if you need a break or to go to the bathroom, feel free to let this person know whatever you need.

And then I never mentioned it again.

Other than saying there will be a variety of puzzles, games and questions, please listen to the "teacher" and do what she asks...I don't think you should explain it to them.

The first IQ test I took (in first grade) was a COMPLETE surprise to me. I wonder if my parents were even told in advance that it would happen. I was asked to leave my classroom--which had never happened before--and taken to a small room with a man I had never met to do the test. (The protocol of the test includes letting the test-taker know that the test is about how smart the test-taker is, so I would have learned that just as I began.) Certainly, today's era of parents knowing the brand name of the test in advance, and letting the children know when the test will occur, and ANYTHING about test procedures, is at least somewhat different from the test conditions existing in the era when I took my test.

This thread prompted me to look up an old news story. One link is in my earlier comment above. Here is another:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/1853847.stm

I wonder what ever happened to that poor kid. I've done a google search and it looks like his life was unstable for quite a while, but I couldn't find anything after age 14.

My son recently took the Wisc. When the tester gave me the results, she first quipped, "well you didn't prep him, like so many of the parents who come through here." At first I thought she was joking, but she was dead serious and my jaw dropped when she recounted how often it happens. We live near one of the big cities on the east coast. I just couldn't believe it. I suppose my naivete was showing, but I am still shocked that it is as common as it is. And what happens when the kid finds out someday that the parent attempted to cheat and inflate the results of the kid's IQ test? Yuck!

Right, chalk and cheese weren't the words. What 22b did a good job of illustrating however, is that the answers given were not only transposed, but sounded like formal dictionary definitions.

Mmm, my own children certainly don't talk like dictionaries, and they are slow/deep types not fast... Slower than a wet week comes to mind when thinking of my kids... But I do know children who both sound like they are spouting dictionaries and who are exceptionally fast... So hard to know what is going on here, it's very worrying either way really. What Ultra Marina said:

Am I really naive? Can one buy the WISC test? I would think there were structures in place to prevent that. Is there a black market in this or something?