Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional ideas for helping with processing speed?

OK, I am going to try to respond to your many excellent questions and ideas--but I am a bit challenged with this interface, as I am new and not particularly interface savvy. I need to read up on how to get those nice quotes in boxes, etc! I apologize in advance for the ragged formatting. Oh--and I am also abbreviation challenged, though I am figuring out things like ds and dd!

And before I say anything else--Geofizz, I'm delighted if my questions have spawned a thread that's useful to both of us!

About this: "did your ds have any other testing or just the WISC? Did he have any type of achievement testing (WIAT or WJ-III) and did he have any follow-up tests of visual-motor integration or executive functioning/fine motor etc? These are things that are important (jmo) to determine *why* the coding and symbol search scores are so low - it could be fine motor (as you've noted a slight issue) or it could be something entirely different - vision for instance. Once you know *why* the score is low you can work toward remediating and accommodating."

This makes so much sense and I can't tell you how irritated I am that the extremely expensive and highly recommended neuropsych person did NOT do a lot of the follow-up tests that folks on this thread have suggested! She concluded that my son has poor VMI based purely on watching him--but she supposedly saw him do things that neither his teachers nor we parents have ever witnessed (use his non-dominant hand to guide his writing hand), so I am dubious about the quality of her observations.

The one useful thing she said about the coding test was that my son was looking back and forth between the "key" and EVERY SINGLE symbol that he had to "fix." I don't know what that means though--maybe that he couldn't keep the symbols in his head? That would make sense, as he is not a visual thinker. And it certainly would slow him down and account for the incredibly low coding score. I believe he got them all right--he was just really really slow.

She DID do the Woodcock-Johnson tests, but I'm not sure what I should be looking for. Process speed, cognitive fluency, visual matching, retrieval fluency, decision speed, and rapid picture naming were all weak. (Does that cluster make sense to anyone who knows this test? Also--caveat--my son can decided that he doesn't really feel like doing things and he is not particularly persuaded by an adult thinking that he should, so I always wonder when he scores poorly on tests whether it's an accurate reflection of his capabilities. That said, I believe the WISC processing score issue, even if the absolute number is off. It is just so far off of the other items, there's gotta be something to it. Also, when I looked at examples from the WISC subtests, it rang true to me that he'd do especially poorly on the coding part.)

As for the other parts of the Woodcock Johnson test, he scored at a grade equivalent of >18 for numbers reversed (AE >22), 7.3 GE for calculation, and--get this--5.1 for writing samples. His spelling, writing fluency, broad written language, cognitive efficiency, and written expression were all between 2 and 3 (grade equivalent).

It is so ridiculous that I am writing all of these scores on an internet chat board rather than having had them explained to me properly by the person who did the test! I am very grateful to all of you who are helping me with this and am growing increasingly ticked off at the disappointing neuropsych experience!

Do any of the following tests address anything that's covered on the CELF or TOWL or anything else you're asking about? If so, do you know what I should be looking for?

CVLT (California Verbal Learning Test)
TEA-Ch (Test of Everyday Attention for Children)
Test of Problem Solving (TOPS3)
Wide range assessment of memory and learning (WRAML2)

I don't think there's anything remarkable in the TOPS3 and the WRAML2 results. As for the TEA-Ch, the scores are all over the place. Hmmmm...Maybe because of varied interest? We ran the report by a special ed person (a friend), who did not think he has ADD, despite those scores. I can't remember what her reasoning was. She might have said that it was really clear from the report that when he is interested, he has no trouble paying attention.

I have no idea what the TOPS3 scores mean. I have the printout of the results, but the report has no discussion of them.

Grrr....

As for my son's attention to his work, I don't think it's so much that he doesn't know where to begin--I think he is often thinking about something that is far more interesting to him than the task at hand.

Vision is fine, though he did have a tracking issue a couple years ago. We worked on that and it got a lot better, but it still could be somewhat of a problem. (The optometrist said he was OK at the end of the vision therapy work, but his friends certainly can track a ball hanging on a string much "cleaner" and faster than he can!)

He says it does not hurt to write, nor does his hand get tired. "I just can't think of what to say."

About this:
"he can get the thoughts out a-ok if he's asked a question about something factual that he knows - but when the writing prompt is open-ended he struggles - and he says at those time he "has nothing" up there in his head"

I don't think we have asked him to write facts. My guess is that he would have a lot less trouble with that. Thanks for the idea! I really don't think he has THAT much trouble with the writing per se; it's the preceding thought process that's problematic.

Thanks also for this idea:
"when our ds was in 2nd grade, we thought his challenge was all about writing, because he sounded so danged smart when he talked. We eventually found out (around 4th grade) that the same types of writing assignments that tripped him up in class (no ideas what to write) also weren't something he could do verbally either - we just hadn't really seen that connection when he was little."

Again, I GREATLY appreciate your incredibly generous and thoughtful replies! I hope I can repay the favors as I stick around on this website and hopefully can help others.

I'm not sure if these scores necessarily imply anything about writing. (It's a complex subject.)

But one thing that jumped out at me is the pattern of scores. My son, and at least one other I've seen here, had the profile of being very good at mathematics, and on WISC-IV having the Comprehension, Picture concepts, Coding, and Symbol search subtests being notably lower than the other six subtests.

Thanks, 22B--very interesting.

One more piece of information for anyone who is wading through all this: Although the recent neuropsych eval left out a visual-motor integration test, he apparently scored in the 90th percentile on one of those (Beery-Buktenica) before 1st grade. (His school does a battery of tests with all kindergarteners and I just remembered that I had notes from my conversation with the person who did those tests.) That seems weirdly high--but it does square with my sense that VMI is not the main issue here because the problem with writing happens before anything visual is happening at all!

In defense of your neuropsych, you aren't exactly dealing with the run of the mill client for this neuropsych exam. Yes, it's their job to tease out what's going on, but when you have a child presenting with such an unusual profile, it's hard to see the whole child. Take each exam like this as one of the steps towards figuring out the child. My son will be going for his 3rd go round of evaluations as we narrow in on what the issues are, I ask better questions, and my spouse and I make more focused observations. I am hopeful that our upcoming exam will get us answers, but it might be a process of ruling out what we're not dealing with.

Polarbear brings a HUGE amount of experience gained after addressing the needs of her unusual child and going through the same process of circling in on a diagnosis and treatment.

OK, I'm not sure anyone's asked it of you -- do you see slow processing speed in your son? Does the number seem consistent with what you see and observe? My daughter has near average processing speed with a strong working memory. This means she can work out multi-step math problems in her head, but it takes so long that I often wonder if she's forgotten the problem or decided she's not going to work on it. My son has gifted-range WM and PSI, and this same thing takes maybe 1/3 the time. What we do see with him, though, is that even after we can tell he's got an answer, it takes several moments for him to form the verbal or written response. Make sense?

From your description, it seems like it might be wise to circle back to the vision issue, giving the evaluator the description of how he kept looking back and forth on the coding test. It could be as simple as that, or it might be part of the issue and not all of it.

What do you see in the way of perfectionism or anxiety? Anything? That kind of behavior is not dissimilar to how my anxious kid started acting when she was spiraling down the perfectionist well.

Geofizz,

I will try to channel your good neuropsych attitude.
:-)

Mine comes from many bits of sloppiness (won't go into that here) and slowness along the way, an inability to explain some of the test results, and the strong feeling that this particular neuropsych person was more interested in her pay than in my son. But anyway, I take your point--and thanks for it, because my irritation is not productive.

I hope Polarbear chimes back in! I also was hugely impressed by her knowledge about all of this.

If processing speed is literally how long it takes for someone to think, no--I don't think my son is in the 5th percentile (which is what the combination of the coding and symbol search scores work out to), though I do think he is not a quick processer. He more closely matches your description of your daughter ("she can work out multi-step math problems in her head, but it takes so long that I often wonder if she's forgotten the problem or decided she's not going to work on it") than your son, though maybe he doesn't take quite that long. He definitely does not take long to form a verbal response once he's got an answer. Actually, not a written one either, if it's math.

Back to those kindergarten scores--he got 25th-50th percentile scores on rapid-naming tests, which I believe also indicate processing speed.

If he is perfectionistic or anxious, it is manifesting as something different. (Ie., "This is boring.") He comes off as extremely confident--and in generally, he's a strikingly cheerful kid. He recovers quickly from setbacks/disappointments and moves on--so neither of those descriptors rings particularly true. He seems quite committed to being a happy guy--if anything, he has a knack for denying things that bother him. Ie., "I can see that you're sad." "I am NOT SAD" (with tears in his eyes). But mostly, he lives in a pretty content place.

Hi Evelyn & Geofizz,

I'll chime back in tonight - it's our last day of school and I'm off to all the school activities for the rest of today!

polarbear

I was talking to my son about touch typing and whether he thought that would make writing easier for him. Yes, he says, for topics of interest.

"When I'm interested in something, my brain goes 100 billion times faster than my hand and when I'm not interested in something, my brain goes 100 million times slower than my hand."

I really really think that a large component of the writing issue maps to interest (lack thereof).

Still befuddled about the processing speed thing, especially how the different manifestations relate to one another:
1. Very low score on the WISC coding section (weak visual memory--and thus the need to look back and forth between the key and every sample that needs to be marked? But in regular everyday life, we don't see strong signs of weak visual memory).
2. Long time to come up with answers to some things--even when it's things that he enjoys doing and has very strong aptitude for (math).

evelyn, the inability to write on a topic which isn't of innate interest... may well just be a maturity issue; one which is related to executive function.

It's only been in the past year or so that my DD has been able to do this with any kind of efficiency at all. She's almost 14. Up until now, we suspect that pretty much ANYTHING else flitting through her brain or going on around her would take precedence over a task she didn't want to do or found boring (for any reason).

Pair high ability with low-value/low-interest tasks in a child without fully developed executive function, and OF COURSE that looks like any number of other problems, basically.

My DD has no underlying problems as far as we have ever been able to determine-- it's 110% situational. She has to be motivated to do it, and that is just the bottom line.

What does his output/processing look like to you when he IS working on something which interests him and offers him intrisic reward?

Howler- were you ever successful in getting dd's teachers to recognize and accept the motivation/interest factor and how it contributed to her performance? I firmly believe that's a big part of ds' situation but the school just keeps pointing to lack of superstar performance in the classroom. He gets almost all 100s but does what he needs to to the letter of the instructions but doesn't go above and beyond. And he has little to no interest in spending time rereading and retelling his reading stories (I think he feels he invested enough time in the initial read). Then he gets his personal book out and reads 😃

Nope. No leeway, really, most of the time. It's not as though the teachers who know her well don't see this problem-- she lets just enough of her actual brilliance show through the cracks that they KNOW as well as we do that she's capable of knocking their socks off every time she opens her mouth or puts words to paper.

Honestly, we didn't push them flexing things for her, either. Because it's not exactly a disability or anything like that, and it's going to be a lifelong thing that won't be eligible for accommodations going forward, so...


well, no way were we going to be "those parents" pressuring teachers to make things more entertaining for DD's benefit so that she could show them what she could actually do.

I mean, I'd love it if DD actually demonstrated her true potential more often. I would. But then again, she has to learn to 'just do it' as well, and that lesson is pretty important. I also made it a habit starting in about 7th grade or so to hand back a rough draft to her and tell her "this is garbage. Rewrite this and do it while paying attention to what you're doing."

She gets very lazy with things that she doesn't want to do. Please understand that I am in no way advocating this approach for a child who has an underlying or probable disability causing difficulty with written expression. Only with kids who are failing to be self-motivated enough to do even a half-hearted effort. While that might be good enough for a B on an assignement from most cream-puff teachers these days, no way does that kind of EFFORT make the grade for me personally.

We have used this to explain to DD that others will only treat her appropriately relative to their PERCEPTIONS of her intellect, however. In other words, if she wants to be treated as more intelligent, she'd better act like it, too. That means not blowing off things that she finds uninteresting.