Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional WISC results - 33point difference PRI and VCI

thought I had posted this but can't see it so apologies if I am duplicating

We just got my daughter's WISC results back - report to follow and we are getting a dyslexia test done too.

her overall IQ is 130 so very superior,
Verbal Comprehension is 106 (66th centile) average
Perceptional Reasoning is 139 (99.5th centile) very superior
Working Memory is 141 (99.7th centile) very superior
Processing Speed is 109 (73rd centile) average

what reasons could there be for such a high difference in scores?

thank you

Welcome!

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The best information may come from your child's tester, who prepared the score report. For example, s/he may have observed something during testing which may have impacted your child's scores and which would be unique to your child.

If parents wish to read up on a little background information to have a bit of foundation for understanding the test score report and preparing for a meaningful discussion with the tester about their child's score report, here are a few ideas and resources to begin with...
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/182871.html#Post182871

There are many different reasons for that kind of spread. Did you get a full report yet? The full list of subtest scores?

thank you for replying. I should get the full report next week, I guess I am just impatient and concerned.

thank you I will look at the resources on the link.

I know with a couple of the questions she could have elaborated much more on the answer but she didn't, she either gave a bizarre answer which was actually technically correct but wasn't the information that was being looked for, or she said she didn't know when I know she would have known but probably couldn't express it so said she didn't know rather than try. I know she worries about getting things wrong as well and the psychologist did comment on that when we were leaving so that will have made a bit of a difference but to be honest this would have been a very small amount and I can't believe it would have added up to being enough for that much of a difference.

thanks for the replies

I can see the reason you are having phonological/orthographical processing evaluated to see if there is a problem. However, I would caution you from reading to much in to these results. While your child does have significant strengths in working memory and perceptual reasoning (I am guessing they are a strong math student) their other scores are average, and solidly so. Contrary to what people sometimes think just because some scores are significantly lower than others it does not mean there is a learning disability. Especially, if those scores are not significantly discrepant from average (below 85). Unless your DC is having real difficulty with reading in the classroom I would not be overly concerned.

I think a higher PRI may be more likely with dyslexic children. I am not sure where I got this information, maybe in the "dyslexia advantage" book?
Anyway, when the discrepancy between PRI/VCI is statistically significant then the higher PRI could indicate a language difficulty/disorder (check essentials of wisc-iv). However, your child's VCI is still decent so I doubt schools would believe there is anything there.
I would not worry about processing speed at all. It is generally lower than the other 3 scales. (wisc-iv essentials- assessment)

thank you bina. I have seen it mentioned in a couple of places about dyslexia can lead to a lower verbal score and also a slower processing speed. That is reassuring processing speed is normally lower.

I doubt the school will care much either to be honest but I have been concerned about dyslexia since starting to try and teach her phonics when she started to learn to read. She just didn't 'get' it in the same way as other children I have helped read and other things like problems with orientation, left and right, has irlen syndrome, forgets what she is supposed to be doing part of the way through doing something (but according to the WISC has exceptional working memory skills) could point towards it too. Paediatrician raised concerns about higher level language processing (I think that was what he called it) but I think it was possible more that we don't use metaphors and idioms so she wasn't really exposed to them. We have started to try and use them more and she is picking them up so I don't think there is a problem there.

I also most likely wouldn't *worry* about it in this instance - but fwiw, the degree to which your ds' PSI is lower than the other scores may very well be indicating something significant. (FWIW I have a ds with dysgraphia/DCD and a dd with vision issues; both have significant gaps in PSI vs PRI/VIQ). Without knowing the subtest scores, it's all just a guess but fwiw, I suspect your ds' Irlen Syndrome may have impacted his processing speed scores. Symbol Search is a subtest that requires a student to find matching symbols in a field of random symbols - similar to "Where's Waldo" - my dd who has the vision challenges tanked that particular subtest. The Coding subtest requires a student to copy simple symbols, and is timed - so a child who has difficult copying for any reason (including vision) may have a depressed score on coding. It's not anything to "worry" about since there is most likely a logical explanation for why the subtest score is low relative to other subtest scores, but it's good to understand why the score is low in the context of your child's strengths and challenges, and also good data to have when you advocate for your child - it's essentially "proof" of the impact of a challenge.


FWIW, we hear a lot on these forums about lower processing speed being lower as a normal thing, but fwiw, after reading the forums here for a long time, most of the instances of relatively lower processing speed scores I've seen are from parents of 2e students who have some type of challenge that impacts the processing speed. I'd also consider the degree of relative low too - most of what I've read is that any difference between subtests/etc on the WISC that is less than 1 SD is nothing to think twice about, but greater than 1 - 1.5 SD is potentially an indication of some type of challenge. I wouldn't dismiss a relative dip of this magnitude as "normal" until I'd really thought through the full results of the testing, read the tester's full report, thought through what each type of test actually asks the student to do, and related that back to what I knew of my child's particular set of challenges.

polarbear

The school might not care, but if you have a private report with strong evidence of dyslexia or any other type of learning challenge, you have good data to use to advocate for the services that your dd needs to remediate and accommodate her challenges. There are other things that you'll need to collect to - examples of classwork, your observations on how your dd has learned to read or has been challenge with reading when you've worked with her, comments from your dd - what she feels, etc - and in the case of dyslexia, further testing (most likely some will be or has been recommended by the psych who did the eval) to pinpoint where her reading challenges are originating.

So, while the school may not care, I wouldn't not try to use what you know to advocate. It can be done, and it can be done successfully - there are quite a few of us here who have advocated successfully at school for accommodations and remedial help for our 2e students. There are also many of us who've found that we need to also do some of the remediation/etc privately - but whatever the final mix you come up with, ultimately you will most likely find you have quite a bit of helpful information within the subtest scores and the tester's report.

If you'd like to post subtest scores, there may be more info we can help with. There may also be information we can help with in achievement testing scores too, if you have them.

Best wishes,

polarbear

ps -
The forgetting what she is supposed to be doing part of the way through was something that happened all the time with my vision-challenged dd before we realized that she had vision issues.

thank you polar bear - that is really helpful.

I will have the subtest scores in a few days so will post them then along with more info from the psychologist and by then my daughter will have done the dyslexia test.

I emailed the psychologist to ask briefly what it might indicate and she said she would say it pointed towards dyslexia type traits and that once DD put her coloured glasses on part of the way through the tests (the tests were done in 2 sessions and for the first one we had forgotten her glasses which were in her school bag) there was a slight increase in her speed. I can't think which tests she did with them compared to which she did without but I do remember when she was doing the symbol search I think it was the psychologist said she thought she had been struggling to focus on the symbols and was tiring. The problem with irlen syndrome is that it isn't as easy to fix as just getting the right lenses is it. It might well be that that is her only problem and we just aren't managing to help it sufficiently rather than a dyslexia problem but it is so hard to know. And of course some people still think there is no such thing as Irlen/scotopic sensitivity which doesn't help.

thanks for your posts

This all shows me just how complicated it all is.

FWIW, my husband is a developmental optometrist and he said irlen syndrome is not a real disorder. However, if a child is having difficulty with reading and processing speed, and you do not have an explanation for it,he would suggest having a thorough evaluation done by a developmental optometrist. I am not sure where you live but if you go to COVD.org it will connect you with a eye professional that would know what to look for in terms of possible problems that your daughter may be dealing with. Not trying to stir anything up just adding info:).

Does she literally forget or just get sidetracked. Ds6 has a WM >99.9 %ile but cannot remember if I give him more than 2 instructions at a time. I think he just starts thinking about the first thing and doesn't hear the rest.

we are in the UK Psychland. I know irlen is odd and doesn't officially exist, the thing is she can read but she sees the letters in the wrong order (tracking is ok - that has been checked) so say she sees the word brightened which she would actually recognise by sight so not a good example but when she segments a word like that she would get br i t end and I know she would as she could sound it like that but then she would end up saying something like birtend as the overall word. or she sees the letters in the wrong places, full stops aren't visible to her if it is black print on white, the white board makes her cry because it hurts her eyes so much so she definitely has some sort of light sensitivity. The place we got her coloured glasses from has a vision therapy department and are the only reputable one in the area (by that I mean the schools respect them, our usual optician respects them as he doesn't deal with this kind of thing and they don't charge way over the odds for everything). I am not sure about the US but in the UK there really isn't much interest in anything other than long or short sighted and the more usual well understood problems.

I do wonder that puffin, there could be a fair amount of not actually listening/zoning out going on.

I have her breakdown of scores now.
raw score scaled score percentile rank
VCI
similarities 15 14 91
vocabulary 22 12 75
comprehension 9 8 25
(information) 13 12 75
(word reasoning)13 15 95

Perceptional Reasoning Index
block design 47 18 99.6
picture concepts 15 13 84
matrix reasoning 25 18 99.6
(picture completion) 19 12 75

Working Memory
Digit Span 17 15 95
letter-number seq 22 19 99.9
(arithmatic) 19 14 91

Processing Speed
coding          42 11 63
symbol search   28 12 75
(cancellation) 70 14 91

(sorry - formatting hasn't copied over)
so obviously comprehension jumps out straight away to me.

I should add that in the processing speed tests she hadn't been wearing her glasses for any of the tests but on the symbol search the psychologist noticed she was able to do it but was finding it hard work so she suggested she wore them for the cancellation test later on and her score is noticeably higher. Could be coincidence but I do wonder if that is why her scores on coding and symbol search are much lower than cancellation.

I am worried about the comprehension score. I keep reading that it can indicate aspergers but I really don't think she has aspergers, she has no social issues at all and she does understand social situations and can change her language appropriately to different ages, knows what is acceptable and what isn't, recognises expressions and so on.

She had her dyslexia test this morning, still waiting for the results from it but one very obvious problem showed up. she was asked to come up with as many words starting with s as she could in a minute, she managed 4. she was then asked to come up with as many animals as she could and she got 12. So I gather this is letter fluency and semantic fluency? obviously some level of discrepancy there, she found it much easier to do the semantic ones.