Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment IQ test during ASD eval-Confused by scores

My DS is 5 1/2 and has had all the indications that he is highlty gifted since he was an infant. I would have bet money his IQ would come out between 135 and 145 - and this is based on much reading and research and comparing.

He has sensory, coordination, and emotional issues however. I have been questioning for years whether he was on the Autism spectrum(Asperger's)or if what I was seeing was the typical overexcitabilities of a gifted kid.

I finally had an official ASD eval done by a psychologist. There was and hour and a half history interview with me (DS was there too) and then 1 hour of IQ testing on the SB V without me in the room. The psychologist reports that DS was cooperative so she believes the results were valid. All of his IQ scores were substantially lower than what I would have guessed based on his achievements - starting kindergarten reading 4 grade levels ahead, math 2 grade levels ahead, very interested in science and knows so much about so many different things. He is also driven to learn.

The based on the history interview and his IQ scores, DS was given a mild to moderate ASD diagnosis. If the IQ scores are accurate, then DS isn't gifted at after all. I can't quite believe that. Can anyone tell me what this profile could mean as far as what his learning style may be, and why I'm seeing such advanced achievement that the scores don't support?

Thanks!

SB-V scaled scores

Fluid Reasoning Non-verbal 12 Verbal 12
Knowledge Non-verbal 10 Verbal 14
Quantitative Reasoning NV 11 Verbal 14
Visual Spatial Processing NV 13 Verbal 12
Working Memory NV 10 Verbal 17

SB-V IQ scores

Non-Verbal 108
Verbal 124
Full Scale 116
Fluid Reasoning 112
Knowledge 111
Quantitative Reasoning 114
Visual Spatial Processing 114
Working Memory 120

Standard IQ tests often don't work that well on young children with ASD. I would be inclined to take these results as provisional, and test again after doing as much as you can for the ASD symptoms.

Our neuropsych says that IQ scores tend to go up and become more coherent as ASD is treated through behavioral interventions.

I agree. If he really does have an ASD, then lower scores or more irregular patterns of scores are expected. It takes extra skill to help them do their best (to keep them focused, etc.). She may have done that, but it's very possible the scores are low.

Some of the IQ and achievement tests in common use rely on social skills or social logic that a child with ASD simply doesn't have in place (yet).

Sometimes you can get a better measure on the Differential Abilities Scale or the Raven. But I'd say it's probably not urgent at this point to have a good number-- better to find a clinician who understands the complexity of him beyond his test scores, and is willing to meet him where he is in working on the missing skills.

Yes. Especially the last sentence.

And on the scores: Note, in particular, the difference between verbal knowledge, which is vocabulary, and nonverbal knowledge, which is predominantly social perception.

There is also research questioning whether SB5 is a best measure for some highly gifted kids. They had kids who scored I think it was a mean of 135 on WISC-IV and were placed in gifted classrooms; a significant proportion scored twenty or more points lower on the SB5. Anecdotes and achievement supported the WISC scores.

Also, that's around the age we first realized my DS had a significant vision issue with one eye and general far-sighted. His SB5 had significant impacts in non-verbal versus verbal similar to yours. Clues we should've noticed were an inability to catch, find things on the ground, difficulty looking at people who were too close to him, minor clumsiness, and a tendency to skip words when reading.

If you observe some of those things, you may also want to see a developmental optometrist or opthamalogist to rule out vision as a factor.

My ASD child has been called brilliant and talented beyond his years by a middle school English teacher and now a high school English teacher (and she was referring to a short paragraph answer on a test). And the funny thing is...he is totally mathy! And from everything all his teachers tell me (totally unsolicited) he performs miles ahead of peers. His IQ shows gifted but not dys gifted. I totally think the iq test doesn't reflect what people see in normal life for him and I think it has to do with his autism.

What does it mean that his verbal working memory was the highest score on the test and the non-verbal working memory was the lowest. I don't have a good understanding of the difference between verbal and nonverbal working memory and what this spread in scores means.

And Zen, DS has exactly the same vision/coordiantion issues - can't catch, balance is poor, can't find anything to save his life, and skips lines or words when reading.

ASD may be a red herring because the sort of cues needed for non-verbal communication rely on complex visual field information. My son's specific diagnosis was ambylopia, which is a more common problem with those sort of issues. He had a year of patching for two hours a day, and it still took a year after that before he could something like find a pair of socks on the floor (basically the brain catching up on five years of missed development.)

p.s. DS8 is working five plus years ahead in math, and three plus years ahead in language arts. We're looking at another go with the SB5 later this year.

Hi pranava!
Wanted to point out an interesting comment on the current SBV results thread by momofthree, particularly the part that it's unsuited for diagnosing ASD kids (sorry I don't know how to quote cross thread):

Momofthree wrote:
"I always find discussions of the sb5 v. Wisc on this board absolutely fascinating... Zen scanner commenting recently that it's not a good test for gifted kids for example, and the general belief here seems to be that it's "harder" to do well on the SB5 than the wisc4. Where as, there is a distinct prejudice in Australia that "everyone is gifted on the sb5"... Which is not at all the case, what is the case is that it is used almost exclusively by gifted specialists here, so they only see kids whose parents think they are gifted. And it's never used diagnostically (asd or ADHD assessments) and for good reason.

There is Australian research comparing the sb5 and the WPPSI3 which concluded that they are very comparable with a small number of children doing inexplicably better on one or the other. They excluded a lot of potential causes of this (test order for example) and concluded that the only real possible reasons were that some kids were much better suited to one or the other test and that smal children are fickle and have good and bad days..."