Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Decline in scores help for a friend

Testing gurus!!! A good friend of mine recently had her ds8 retested (formally 145 FSIQ) and got these scores:

Verbal Comprehension 116 86th percentile
Perceptual Reasoning 119 90th percentile
Working Memory 120 91st percentile
Processing Speed 112 79th percentile

Full-Scale IQ 122 93rd percentile

VCI 116
SI 15
VC 15
CO 9

PRI 119
BD 4
PCn 16
MR 19

WMI 120
DS 13
LN 14

PSI 112
CD 11
SS 7


Shouldn't they calculate a GAI based on these large discrepancies??
And also.... What are your thoughts???
Please help me help her!!

GAI simply excludes WMI and PSI, at a glance those don't look to have a big discrepancy at the index level.

Looking at the two much,much lower scores: Block Design and Symbol Search would make me want to have my kids eyes checked by a developmental optometrist or opthamologist.

For overall, they'd probably want to consider: tester/kid mix, age of original testing, health/mood on day of testing, schedule of testing session

I am not a guru BUT yes I believe a GAI should definitely be calculated. Also, my son had similar low scores in symbol search, coding and block design (but his comprehension score was always high) when he first took the WISC . He had a vision issue and he has dysgraphia. About a year later and after a year of vision therapy (ad he started doing puzzles!) his block design went up to high average but symbol search and coding still abysmal. He has dysgraphia and Ehlers Danlos. Kids with dysgraphia and fine motor skill problems do very poorly on those tests. My son would never have qualified for any gifted rpgram without a GAI calculated.

The sum of the scaled scores for VCI and PRI is 78 which translates to a GAI of 121.

Not a Guru by any stretch of the word!

The GAI would be about the same as the FSIQ. It wouldn't make a diference in this case. Typically GAI would be calculated with significant index differences.

What age was the first IQ test? What was the reason for the second test?

I know this isn't a popular view around here, but I have seen a few local kids drop dramatically after early testing. It's one of the reasons my district doesn't want to look at testing before 6 or later.

OTH, I have also seen kids that just don't seem to test well ever despite all sorts of evidence to the contrary. Did the tester give any additional information about what was happening during BD? That is the one score that rally stands out as odd or problematic.

I also calculate a GAI of 121, so the GAI is about the same as the FSIQ. However, given the scatter within the VCI and PRI, some testers would say that none of these composite scores (VCI, PRI, GAI, or FSIQ) are interpretable as an overall measure of cognitive functioning.

Also, I don't think the PSI composite score of 112 matches the subtest scaled scores of 11 and 7 that you report. The sum of these two scaled scores is 18, which is below the population mean of 20 (i.e., 10+10), so the composite score should be less than 100, my best guess would be the composite score should be about 95, not 112.

I'll add that I've seen the same thing - one with my own child. I have a dd who had early ability testing as a young 5 year old when we had taken her to see a psych for anxiety. To be honest, we were surprised at how high her scores were! She was tested again at 8 and her scores were about 20 points lower overall - and more in line with the child we know. She's still an excellent student - who might even look highly gifted to folks who are looking for that stellar straight-A kid who performs very very well in an academically challenging school setting. But she's had yet another round of IQ testing and several sets of achievement tests through school, and her later scores are what's held up, not the really high early scores.

I also know of a few families who's children tested into our local highly gifted program in kindergarten who's scores did not hold up in later testing. So I wouldn't automatically assume there was an issue with the test if scores do drop - instead I'd want to look at the overall picture - what was going on when the testing took place, is there any reason to doubt the current scores etc. I'd want to also know why the child was tested a second time - was there a concern with academic performance or worry about achievement?

And I'll second the suggestion to look into potential vision issues. Block Design and Symbol Search were the subtests that my dd who had undiagnosed double-vision totally tanked on her WISC - both depend on vision. My dd was tested by a neurospcyh, so she had an additional test that looked at vision where she also had issues. The thing is - up until that point in time where it was so clearly separated out by subtest none of us (parents, teachers, piano teacher, sports coaches etc) had any *clue* she wasn't seeing well - she'd even passed her routine eye exams with our regular eye dr with flying colors. Seeing two of everything And she was just a child, so she had no idea the rest of us weren't seeing as many "things" as she was lol!

Best wishes,

polarbear

At what age did the child test previously (the 145 score)?

At age 5 he received the FSIQ 145. Full tested now due to concerns over ADHD... Such a big drop. Very concerning for tr family.

I would definitely look into vision with such a low block design score and such a high matrix reasoning score. That seems that something is off in his vision. Matrix reasoning is a fair indicator of intelligence and his score is really high on that one.

Also - his comprehension subtest seems low comparatively. I would try to figure out why. These are social comprehension questions.