Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Wechsler scores are unusual (1%) but won't explain

After 6 years of arguing with JA's elementary school I was finally able to get testing finished!!! The results write up has this statement:
"Verbal and non verbal abilities are scored in superior range. In contrast, his Working Memory and visual motor processing speed are scored low average. This profile is unusual and seen in only about 1% of overall sample"

VCI - 113-127 superior
PRI - 112 - 127 superior
WMI - 81 - 97 low average
PSI - 78 - 96 low average

What the heck does this mean ??

Some of this has been discussed in this recent thread, regarding GAI and CPI:

http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/198131/1.html

Your child's profile is consistent with cognitive ability just outside/on the border of the gifted range. The VCI and PRI have more to do with higher-level thinking and reasoning skills, and can be combined in the GAI (General Ability Index). The WMI and PSI have less to do with general intelligence, and more to do with efficiency, and can be combined in the CPI (Cognitive Proficiency Index). Your child's performance on these tasks was slightly below average, which suggests that, although thinking ability is good, efficiency may be vulnerable, which can lead to a significant amount both of frustration for the student, and of underestimation of ability on the part of educators. Given the profile, the examiner should also have computed a GAI.

The scores are reported as ranges (VCI ranging from 113 to 127) because of standard error of measurement. This is a term that statisticians use to refer to the minor variations in measurement that occur due to the exact circumstances at the moment of any given test administration. Any given person, on any given day, may score a little higher or a little lower than the "official" score obtained on an IQ or achievement test. In order to capture that small amount of uncertainty, confidence intervals are used to indicate that, if administered the same tasks on another occasion, the individual would be expected to score within the range reported on 95 out of 100 chances (if your conf. int is at the 95% level, which it usually is for the WISC-IV).

As to the area performances: Both verbal and perceptual reasoning skills appear to be equally well-developed, on the border of High Average and Superior, which is considered to be just at the bottom edge of the gifted range by some professionals. This is actually an excellent place to be when navigating the public school system, as it is usually somewhat easier to balance appropriate challenge with academic acknowledgement in this range. Were there any inconsistencies within the domains, or were the subtests all within about three points of each other?

Working memory is the ability to retain, mentally manipulate, and reproduce information--symbolic, in this case. This area appears to be a significant relative weakness for your child. A number of different factors may affect performance on these tasks. It is not unusual for high cognitive children with a deliberate, conscientious, perfectionistic style to score lower on this and PSI than on VCI and PRI, however, usually, they score in at least the average range, and frequently at least high average. Your child's low average performance is more concerning. Other possible explanations include fatigue, inattention, impulsivity, emotional interference (e.g., anxiety, depression), psychomotor retardation from medication side effects (such as those used in the treatment of anxiety/depression), and illicit substance use.

The processing speed index reflects the efficiency with which individuals complete rote visual-motor tasks--pencil-and-paper symbolic tasks, in this case. It is subject to many of the same issues as working memory, both with regard to the high cognitive population and the alternate explanations of low performance. In addition, processing speed may be affected by vision, visual tracking, fine-motor skills, and motor planning.

The kind of academic concerns that are often encountered in conjunction with low CPI (WMI and/or PSI) include difficulty with automaticity, such as reading, writing, or calculation fluency skills, and downstream effects on reading comprehension, written expression or multi-step math/math problem solving. When expectations are for short or mostly oral responses, these may not show up as much. As students progress into the higher grades, where the volume of reading and writing, and the complexity of reading comprehension, writing, and math reasoning becomes greater, these vulnerabilities may be exposed. This transition may feel particularly unexpected in a child with strong thinking and reasoning, as, up until then, they were able to compensate for any shortcomings in efficiency by employing cognition. Based on the cognitive profile alone (absent achievement testing), I would wonder about the possible presence of a learning disability/2e.

You don't mention why you wanted your child tested, and what you hoped your family would gain from the process. If you are comfortable sharing a little more, perhaps folks here will be able to focus their comments a bit.

I would probably tell them I'd like to see actual scores and percentiles rather than a confidence range, and also scores on subtests so you can see if there is very good or very poor performance on one or more subtests compared to the others. For instance the range in my DD's scores was huge. She scored an 8 on coding and a 19 (22 if you use extended norms) on matrix reasoning (the average for subtests is a 10, which would be 50th percentile). You can see the effects of this in her real life. She is very slow with written work, reflecting the coding score of 8, but she is very strong with visual ability and seeing patterns, and it shows up in how she whips puzzles together and builds things, and reads music very well (piano). Based on DD's low processing speed score the psych who assessed her recommended it be addressed in a 504 and certain accommodations be made. Her working memory score was 127, I think, which is fine....usually that is depressed as well in kids like her (ADHD).

Based on the c.i.s and classifications, this is most likely what the actual index scores are:

VCI = 120, 91%ile
PRI = 120, 91%ile
WMI = 89, 23%ile
PSI = 87, 19%ile

sooz - if you can share the reason you sought out testing, we might be able to offer up some additional insight re the scores. Was the testing for gifted id or because your child had been struggling in school in some way?

While the profile may be atypical (less than 1% of the population), there are quite a few of us around the forum here who are parenting children with discrepancies as large or larger between VCI/PRI and WM/PSI - so if there's a chance your child is struggling in some way or seems to be underachieving *or* is under challenged or isn't having their gifts/abilities recognized at school, if you describe a little bit about what's going on, there might be a parent here who's in a similar situation who could offer up thoughts re what the scores *might* mean.

Best wishes,

polarbear

J's handwriting is illegible!!! Not hard to read but totally illegible. I worked with him at home to the point of tears every day and it never improved. As he progressed in school I noticed that even though verbally he was able to give me a 30 minute dissertation on what he just learned, when asked to write it out, he only gave short phrases. Because of these issues he was labeled lazy and also was but in lower level classes. He became very frustrated and bored in these classes, but was getting Ds and Fs.

He also struggles with short term memory issues and often forgets assignments,papers that need signed, to put on pants.

First, we asked for testing due to J struggling with his handwriting. His writing is eligible. He is also forgetful. He was labled lazy and defiant at school. Even though he passed every standardized test with flying colors, they kept putting him in the lower level classes, in which he would get bored.
Second; I reviewed the info the school sent to me and asked a few clarifying questions. J's GAI is 124, which the school psychologist called, in the superior range. The school reports they do not utilize that as they use a cross battery procedure for testing. She is getting me the scores from the WJ-III-NU and the CHC Broad and Narrow Composites

When you get the WJ scores, we can discuss them. XBA also requires normative weaknesses (below either 90 or 85 standard score, depending on the school district's cutoffs) in some cluster area. They do not use the GAI because it combines two CHC broad areas.

EDIT: actually, more than two, strictly speaking.

This sounds like classic dysgraphia, and if he is dysgraphic, that will explain the large dip in scores in PSI. There are different reasons for dysgraphia (could be fine motor, could be a visual challenge). I'd ask the school to provide you with the full report, including subtest scores - these can be helpful in determining what the issue is - for instance, under PSI there is a "coding" and a "symbol search" subtest. If coding is lower than symbol search, that might point to fine motor issues. If symbol search is lower, it's more likely to be a vision issue.

There may also be variances from subtest-to-subtes within the VCI and PRI that would contain useful information; the PSI/VCI/WM/PRI scores are all averages of the subtests within each.


I have a dysgraphic ds; this is a *very* difficult situation to be dealing with if left unrecognized and unaccommodated, particularly for a bright child, and your ds is clearly very smart (from the VCI and PRI scores), even if he's not technically considered to be in the "gifted" range.


I am not knowledgable on memory issues, so can't really help you there. BUT one thing to be aware of is that sometimes symptoms such as these are shared among many different diagnoses. My ds is dysgraphic but the dysgraphia is related to a diagnosis of Developmental Coordination Disorder - and although his WM score is not as low as your ds, or as low as his PSI, he had considerable struggles with organization in elementary school, and especially struggled with things like losing all of his homework even though it was in his backpack when he went to school etc. He still has some organizational challenges but most of them improved tremendously with maturity - in some ways the improvement was due to intense work on my part and his part to repeat repeat repeat until it became second nature (and this is related to dysgraphia in a way - the lack of development of automaticity), having teachers who were structured and predictable in assignments, and also becoming able to come up with his own ways of coping as he matured.

I have a few suggestions for you - and a question. Is the school going to offer any accommodations or an eligibility review for an IEP? I'd ask the school for several things:

1) An OT eval focused on fine motor and handwriting. Include a test of handwriting speed.

2) Request the Test of Written Language (TOWL)

3) Ask for accommodations for handwriting (keyboarding would be appropriate at his age - I think he's upper elementary?). If he was really young, I'd start with scribing but at his age he will most likely pick up keyboarding quickly, unless you find that there are fine motor issues that impact his ability to keyboard. If there are - don't panic - my ds' dysgraphia is fine motor-related, and he is also impacted somewhat when typing so his keyboarding speed is slow relative to peers. It's still 100s times faster and easier to use than handwriting for him, so it's still worth having as an accommodation.

4) When you get your ds' WJ-III Achievement scores, be sure to request the full report with all subtest scores. If they seem to vary all over the place, chances are it's due to his handwriting challenge, so take each subtest and chart the score and then look for trends in scores based on response type (oral response vs handwriting untimed response vs handwriting timed response). You may see some very clear patterns here, and if you do - that means the scores aren't really representative of your ds' knowledge (if they are atypically low across handwriting response tasks) but instead they are illustrating that your ds has a challenge with using handwriting.

My last bit of advice - if you can afford a private neuropsych evaluation or if your insurance will cover it, it is probably going to be worth the investment of time and money based on the issues you've described and your ds' test results. You can request what you need from the school, but it's been my experience that private testing is more helpful for the following reasons:

1) A neuropsych will typically include follow-up tests to help determine why there was such a large discrepancy in scores. The Beery VMI, for instance, is a widely used test that will help determine if issues such as you're seeing with processing speed are due to fine-motor challenges or visual challenges. Executive functioning tests are also typically included. One of the tests that was helpful in determining that our ds had fine motor dysgraphia was a "finger-tapping" test - you'll see this referenced f you google and read up on dysgraphia.

2) Neuropsychs will typically include a detailed interview with a parent to review the child's developmental history from infancy, and this can uncover clues to what is challenging now that as a parent, you might never have realized meant anything. This absolutely happened with our ds - he had obvious signs of Developmental Coordination Disorder as early as his first year of life but we didn't recognize them as anything other than cute quirky baby/toddler things - and they didn't really impact his life at that point in time so it wasn't an issue we worried about.

3) School will be evaluating your ds' ability to access his academics; a neuropsych is looking at your ds' full life function, not only now but in the future - it's a broader perspective, and it's also a helpful perspective which can help you as an advocated put together the larger picture of what accommodations to focus on and what to let go etc, which you might not get from a school eval.

4) There is no "agenda" in what you will hear from the neuropsych - and there might be in a school report. The school may not want to provide services for a variety of reasons, including stretched budget and limits on staff etc - so they are likely to show you what makes sense from their perspective to show you, and possibly leave out other details that are important to understand about your child. Please know I'm not knocking school staff on this, just being realistic - this does happen. You've mentioned it took 6 years already to get to the point you were able to convince the school to test your ds - chances are you aren't facing an easy situation where the school staff will fall over themselves rushing to figure out *why* your ds has the test scores and challenges that he has. At the very least, having a professional private opinion you can trust will help you know you're on the right track at school even if there are no issues with the school.

5) The neuropsych will give you recommendations for follow-up testing and therapies based on their evaluation of your ds' challenges/diagnosis. You'll get more detail here than at school, because they will provide you with a list of everything your child needs (from their perspective), and the school is going to provide you with a list of everything your ds qualifies for that the school offers. It's quite possible that you'll find your ds needs more than his school is offering - hopefully not, but it does happen.

6) You will get a written report and usually a follow-up interview where you can ask any questions you have about the report. Just my experience, but I've found it much easier to get much more info in a 1 hour session with a private neurospych than in the access I've had to school psychs post-testing and in IEP eligibility meetings. Other parents in other districts have better luck, but from what you've written I see red flags re what you are going to be able to get from your school.

Can you tell us which grade your ds is in? Is he in middle school yet? Just curious.

Best wishes,

polarbear