Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment wppsi-iv asynchrony and potential eye sight issues

To be honest it sounds to me as though you're being wound up by this school director who is saying a few things that don't make sense to me.

Most glaringly, it's nonsense that your DS (necessarily) needs to be taught to read differently because he's highly visual spatial. There was a vogue for analysing children's "learning styles" and claiming that these had straightforward consequences for how they should be taught a few years back, but it's since been debunked, and it was never as simple as the school director suggests anyway. A good teacher will have various tools; he's likely to be more interested in some than others and to get there with some combination of what works for him, but you can't predict what that combination will be from an IQ test (science can't, I mean, and the school director shouldn't make such pronouncements - you and the teacher should feel free to guess what will work best and try that first, but don't be too surprised if the way he learns is different from your guess!).

Secondly, you don't need an explanation for the difference between two subtests in the same index. If they were always close, the test wouldn't need both! If you have other reasons to suspect vision issues - even if you're only spotting them now you think about it - by all means do go to a developmental optometrist and get him checked out. But to suggest someone do so solely on the basis of a discrepancy in an IQ test seems bizarre to me. Maybe he just didn't like that subtest!

Do you like this director's judgement otherwise? Are you sure the school is a good one? The things above are red flags for me, but if everything else was good about the school I'd smile and nod. (Your DS did get into the school, right? You didn't actually say.)

Going on: don't confuse "is he gifted?" and "does he qualify for DYS?". The results you have look pretty squarely gifted, but most gifted children don't qualify for DYS, and their support is not a magic bullet. Some here have found it helpful to have a DYS person talk to a school, more have found DYS a useful way to find peers for social events, but not getting your son into DYS isn't a disaster. And not doing so is reasonably well correlated with not needing the particular support they offer anyway. You don't yet know, at least as far as what you've said goes, whether your DS is going to have trouble at school. He may indeed be in the range 130-140 which (if I remember rightly) is what's sometimes called "optimally gifted" because these children tend to fit in and do well with mainstream education, have little difficulty interacting with most of their age peers, etc., and yet do well. If so, be happy! DYS is trying to help the children for whom those things are not true.

As to the score themselves I'm no expert and as someone else said this is a new test - but I don't think the scores you posted really qualify as "all over the place"; there's some scatter, but you always get that, and he clearly has lower processing speed than the other indices, but that's normal. Did the psychologist express concerns about scatter, or just talk/write through it?

If you choose to retest when he's 6, the WISC-V would be the obvious test to take (the WISC-IV has been replaced). But I'd suggest not deciding that now. Wait and see whether you think then that testing might give you useful information.

Thanks! Actually you raised an interesting point. What do you think about Linda Silverman's research about visual spatially gifted children? Any resources that talk about the debunking? Silverman thinks that the children need to be taught differently to read, and so far her written work seems to make sense. This is actually affecting our school selection and we don't know if it should. Basically the premise is that schools that does a lot of rote memory learning is not going to work. We do have an excellent traditional schools in our area, which we ruled out because of this. There is one school for gifted kids that we ruled out because that is too far from us. That leaves us with two schools for gifted children, that are startups, this is one of the startups, but they both have been started by the people who had worked at that faraway school.

As to the score, we are curious. We have read various sources, including from a psychologist who did cross-test her clients for free, that newly normed tests depress the scores, and the difference in scores against older tests is much more pronounced amongst gifted children who are at the right end of the bell curve (i.e. the diff could be as much as 20 points in the wppsi-iv case mentioned). Also wppsi-iii results seemed higher than wppsi-iv, and I am assuming the same with wisc-iv vs. wisc-v.

Are you sure DYS kids must have social issues? My son prefers older companions on certain things, but he has been ok with his same age peers on other things. I also have worked with extremely gifted adults, but they don't have social issues. I recall reading that social issues do not show unless the IQ is greater than 150, but then again that could be another stereotyping, as it seems that the test scores are sensitive to various things, including ceiling and the age of the test.

I think much of Linda Silverman's work is not really research at all as understood in the scientific community. She typically studies the children who come to her at the GDC. She has such a high profile that those children are unlikely to be representative of any population, even if there were no other problems with her work. Clearly she has a great deal of expertise with gifted children and her opinions are worth listening to, but also, she's heavily invested in the learning styles stuff so it's unsurprising she's slow to drop it in the face of evidence that it's not useful. I'd suggest considering her writings as possible sources of good ideas, but not letting them override your own knowledge of your DS.

Here's a lay summary and link to one debunking article.

I didn't say DYS kids must have social issues! Of course not all do. But DYS exists to help solve problems that profoundly gifted children have, and one common problem is difficulty in relating to age peers because their interests and ways of interacting are very different.

Honestly I think you should relax, pick the school you can most easily see your DS being happy in, and otherwise keep doing what you're doing!

Thanks ColinsMum for the education The school issue is unfortunately not as easy.. They all do marketing And there is no easy way to find out if they walk the talk until we get in, and it is not easy to move, because there are fewer spots if you don't join at K. We are also feeling hard pressed to keep our son challenged, I don't know yet what next to do after this lego spree, so some resources will help.

Coming back to my first post, any other insights into our results? Apart from the scatter (or lack thereof, apart from speed and where he ceilinged), I don't know what each section measures. Our psychologist mentioned he can be retested right away with SB5, that has higher ceiling, so we are pondering about that as well.

I think you're thinking of Hollingworth when you mention that social issues occur over IQ 150 (I think she actually wrote 155). That was based on older ratio IQ tests, which tended to give higher scores than the newer IQ tests. However, the basic point is the same. Kids at the farthest tail of the distribution are more likely to have social challenges than those closer to the middle. On modern IQ tests, it is rare to score over 150 without extended norms.

Some kids who score in the DYS range have social issues, some don't. Different kids are different. Some do fine, others have a lot of trouble fitting in. The chance of the latter gets higher the farther you go from the mean.

It definitely sounds as though your child is gifted, but (as has been said before) he is very young, You would be most likely to get the best, most reliable results if you wait until he is 6 or 7 before testing. You know what he is like and will see quickly how he fits in in school to know if he needs more. It's likely scores will be lower with the WISC-V and it isn't clear yet how that will affect you. If you rush to have him tested with the SB-V, realize that it's quite different and that he may not necessarily get a similar score. The scores are highly correlated, but the tests are designed differently and some children do a little better on one or the other based on their particular strengths (even though the scores are usually similar unless there is a problem like a child who is distracted). The WISC is sometimes not recommended for gifted kids because of the emphasis on processing speed, but that isn't an issue if you can use the GAI instead.

I can't comment on Linda Silverman's work on learning styles because I haven't read it and am completely unfamiliar. I have heard many good things about her advice, so I don't want to discourage you at all. Is this school specifically using her approach, though? I do know that there are many claims made about learning styles that are not supported by empirical evidence. This doesn't necessarily mean they aren't true, but just that there isn't current data to support them. Let me be very clear, though, that I'm not talking about Linda Silverman's work because I'm not familiar with it. My point is that you need to make sure you know exactly what the school is offering to know whether it is likely to be good; just saying that they support different learning styles doesn't mean much. I think most gifted kids wouldn't do well with a lot of rote learning that could become repetitive, not just those with visual-spatial strengths. You need to know how exactly they work with kids with different learning styles and whether it is based on a specific approach (like you mention for Linda Silverman) that you can research in advance and ask others about (and, again, I've heard nothing but good things about her work - but the school may be using a completely different approach to learning styles).

We have had a lot of experience with schools trying to find the right educational environment and my experience is that it is never what you expect based on what they tell you in advance. They want you to choose their school. If you can let you child visit for a few hours or at least observe a little then that may help. If you can't, think over your biggest concerns and diplomatically ask how they handle those issues. Leaving it open ended rather than asking for a specific thing will give you a better idea of how they work. One principal took me to a classroom and just asked a teacher my question so I could hear her unprepared answer; that was fantastic not only because the answer was good but because it showed their confidence that everyone would work with us (and it turned out to be a wonderful school as well). Talk with teachers, not just administrators or admissions officers. Ask if they will let you talk with parents. The single most important thing is flexibility because you don't really know how your child will do in their school until he starts there. You need people who will work with you to come up with good solutions.

You mentioned seeing information from a psychologist who tested kids with two different tests, so I think you mean Deborah Ruf's work. It is very likely that kids will get lower scores on the new tests because that is what generally happens (just look at what happened when the last round of new tests came out). She is using two different tests, though, not older and newer versions of the same test. She is comparing the WPPSI-IV to the SB-V. So it's harder to draw conclusions because the tests are not only different in age, but also different in design.

Anyway, it sounds like your son had very promising scores and like being prepared to work with his school is important. I think you would get much more value out of waiting a little to get a new IQ test, though.

For some reason, the last two posts didn't show up until I submitted mine.

Yes, schools do a lot of marketing. However, the time when you're making the decision is when they are most likely to negotiate. You may want to arrange a meeting, go over concerns to see how they say they would address those concerns, and then write a letter summarizing what was said so you have a record. Like I said before, the biggest thing is to find a school that is flexible. So ask what they do if a child is working ahead in an area, for example. Do they show a willingness to accelerate or differentiate, or do they say, "we have many bright children" or "it's most important for them to learn social skills.?

There is a book by Susan Winebrenner called "Teaching Gifted Studenfs in the Regular Classroom" that may be helpful to get ideas of some of the things that schools may offer.

As far as the actual results, kids do sometimes have profiles like that. I saw an interview once with Nancy Robinson in which she specifically talked about how gifted kids often have very uneven results and how that is very noticeable when testing them. Especially with such a young child, though, it's hard to know if maybe he was less enthusiastic or concentrating less on some sections. The psychologist should be able to help you know if that played a role.

What kind of 2e was he, and what type of intervention did he have? I'm wondering if what you are seeing in the subtest scatter is potentially related.

FWIW, we have a highly visual-spatial child who also was into Legos etc as a young child. He's older now and quite likely headed into engineering (and has more than a few engineers in his family tree). He did learn how to read very differently than schools typically teach reading, but not having a special program aimed at visual-spatial personalities didn't hold him back from learning how to read, it just happened. He didn't start to read until he was around 5, but once he was reading he was quickly well above grade level.

Re the subtest scatter, my ds is 2e and has significant scatter, and he's also had IQ testing repeated several times at this point. Some of the scatter we've seen under VCI and PRI (in the WISC-IV) has seemed very random - it flipped from his first testing at 8 to another round of testing at 11). He has a larger and consistently depressed coding subtest scores, which is related to his 2e challenge. The only advice I can really give you at this point is that any one test is a set of data from one specific point in time. It's possible the scatter means something, and it's possible it's either random or your ds was simply tired or bored or distracted and didn't perform his best during some of the subtests. What you'll need to do as a parent is observe, and when/if you see any challenges in school (or life) see if there is any correlation to what was measured in the subtest scatter. If so, you'll want to follow up with other types of testing to better understand what's going on.

I doubt that lack of "practice" depressed any scores however. Our neuropsych has shown us bits and pieces of the types of questions asked on this type of testing, and it hasn't struck me as the type of thing that exposure or practice would significantly improve scores on. What *might* improve scores is simply being older, more mature, understanding that it was important to do your best, perhaps a good rapport with the tester etc. I personally wouldn't test again until your ds is a little older simply because it's easy to question results when a child is so young.

Hang in there - choosing a school can be challenging, and our experience was it was truly difficult to know how any school would be for any of our kids until they were actually attending the school.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Thank you, Polarbear and Apm221, for the education.

Our child had oral sensory issues that were pretty severe. It went away when he was 3, but it was a very gradual process. Today he has some mild sensitivities, such as to smell, clothing tag, shoes, also I have to be careful when trimming his hair. But the extent of today's problem is akin to allergy, we can avoid it by choosing something that he approves, and he complains about them but doesn't have any strong reactions.

Another thing we look for in the schools after we got the result, is what kind of ceiling they have, "in case" our son is highly gifted. We don't want to have to move him if a school can't accommodate acceleration to that extent. One other school for gifted children supports acceleration up to two grade levels up, I think, and I am not sure that is high enough ceiling. I am guessing, I am just not quite sure how to handle the level of precocity that he shows in 3D, and I don't know how that will translate into academic once he starts real schooling. Our current school focuses on SEL and is not very academic.

Thanks also for the comments about testing. I think you are right about the researchers that you mentioned. I also read a forum where some parents had their children recruited for the norming studies, and the results were very different than a previous version (one PG kid did not even score as gifted). I will need to do more reading about this and educate myself more. We are actually not into labeling, but we want to be sure our son will get the kind of support he will need.

When you say they support grade acceleration up to two levels up, what exactly so you mean? Do you mean that they do grade skipping, that they do subject acceleration, or that they provide differentiated work in the classroom? It's very important to find out exactly what they mean. For example, we were told my daughter could have book at her reading level for independent reading. It turned out they didn't allow kids to get books more than one grade above their level because they would "run out of books." It sounds to me as though you're suggesting that they do single subject acceleration. Are you already thinking that he would need to attend classes more than two grade levels ahead or are you thinking of differentiated instruction in his grade? I think you are unlikely to find schools that support more acceleration than that except maybe as differentiation in the classroom. They may sometimes allow more acceleration in special cases, but it's unlikely to be a common policy (except in schools that let kids work at heir own pace).

apm, those are excellent questions, I had not really thought of those differences in acceleration opportunities! One of the schools I look at provide abilities grouping, mixed age instruction. So you might be chronologically grade 1, but sits with grade 6 kids in algebra, and they do it in the same classroom. But I suppose at some point you might hit a ceiling anyway if you are at grade 8 (the top grade at the school) and need to accelerate several years ahead. The other school move the kids around to the classrooms of older kids, but potentially only up to two grade levels.

I don't know yet whether he'll need acceleration, or how much, since we haven't done academics with him yet.