Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Drop in working memory and processing speed

Has anyone ever seen or know anything about a WISC score dropping dramatically over 2 1/2 years? Short version of the story…tested DS 2 1/2 years ago. Dx EG with no 2E. Struggles in school over the past 2 1/2 years, school and I decide to test him again. Again EG and no 2E. Biggest outliers to me are drops in WMI from 81% to 68% and PS from 84% to 50% (VCI, PRI and FSIQ stayed consistent). Any thoughts?

What kinds of struggles does he have in school?

How old is he? Does he have allergies? Or take meds for allergies? I'm not an expert (maybe aeh will chime in on this), but I suspect both can affect those two indices.

Just for some perspective:

The WMI drop is only a difference of six standard score points, well within the standard error range (confidence interval). I wouldn't even give that one a second thought.

The PSI drop is 14 points, which is a little more notable.

KADmom is correct, both indices are more vulnerable to anything that affects attention, including time of day, what/when your last meal was, medication, having a good night's sleep. Another factor for PSI is the age of the child. If the first administration was at age 6 or 7, he had one version of each PSI subtest. If he was then 8+ for the second administration, he had different versions. The slight alteration in tasks may be enough to account for a little variation in performance (it's not supposed to, but GT kids, as we know, don't always respond the same way NT kids do).

Neither drop is dramatic. If you don't see any clinical or functional indicators of concern (that is, IRL), then I wouldn't be too concerned about the PSI sag.

Black cat--spelling primarily with reading and writing a close second
KADmom--almost 9. Recent discovery of food allergies, but no meds.
aeh--Thanks for the perspective--exactly what I was looking for. You are right on the age of the two tests so that could explain it. As for functional indicators of concern, basically I have a EG 3rd grader who has "no problems", yet reads on grade level, and writes and spells on a mid-1st grade level---basically been stagnate in his learning over the past 2 years. Overall school and testers all agree that something is wrong they are struggling to determine exactly what. At this point we have tested everything from education to psych to medical to eyes to speech etc. Basically all of his sub scales on the standardized test scores are either >99.9% or 50% which make for an interesting learning profile to say the least. Thanks again for all the help.

mykids, I have a dd with food allergies, and with a few of her allergens, she experiences a type of "brain fog" that makes it difficult to think as clearly as she normally does for up to 24 hours after she's eaten the food. It's not something that is obvious looking in from the outside, and when she was your ds' age the only way I realized it was happening was that I first read about an adult with the same food allergy (when I was googling for recipes lol)… and the adult explained how her head felt and how her brain functioned when she was exposed to the food. Once my dd was just a few years older than your ds, she was able to share that she definitely had headaches and issues with trying to stay focused after she'd eaten a food she was allergic to - but it wasn't something she understood to communicate to us earlier. The other thing with our dd - we were so focused on dealing with food allergies for so much of her early years that we never realized the impact of environmental allergies. She's allergic to mold and dust, and there are things as subtle as specific rooms at school etc that bother her. Things like that aren't noticeable enough for her to even mention to another person but they can affect her in a way she wouldn't be as fast at making marks on a test liked the WISC processing speed tests require, or thinking as clearly on a working memory type test.

That said, the pattern you've listed for your ds fits the pattern that is sometimes present in 2e children. Has any of the testing that your ds has had been private or is it all through the schools? Where/why the testing was done, and how much follow-up testing was included might be the difference between having a child who's achievement seems low and is puzzling to having a child with an actual diagnosis. Diagnosis isn't a 100% necessary thing to have for school - when a school evaluates a student they are looking at functioning in the academic environment, and accommodations/remediation/etc is tailored to fit the student's needs. That doesn't necessarily require a diagnosis - but to be effective, it certainly requires an understanding of what is at the root of the issue. Private testers, otoh, give diagnoses - but they don't *just* throw out diagnoses willy-nilly, they will see a pattern such as your ds' test scores show, put that together with the observation that your ds appears to be below grade level in achievement in a certain area, and then, based on what that data is suggesting might be going on, follow-up with other tests (or referrals to other professionals) to get to the root of the issue. That digging/further testing doesn't always happen at school, for a number of different reasons. The other thing that can happen at school is that to qualify for services students have to fall below very low minimum bars outlined in school district policy (this isn't a hard and fast rule at all… but it is often used this way in practice). If you have an EG student who is struggling with reading, for instance, they may still be way above the minimum bar for qualifying for services, therefore they are *not* going to come away from a school evaluation with a diagnosis and most likely aren't going to come away from the evaluation with any kind of recommendation for follow-up help (because if they *did* get any of that, the school would be potentially id'ing the child as LD/etc and that would then in turn mean the school needed to qualify them for services). I most likely didn't explain that well, but the flip side of it is, if you have testing done privately, you will typically get recommendations for follow-up testing/remediation/accommodations etc even if your child is functioning at a level that doesn't qualify them for school district services.

Your ds is also at an age where LDs are often first identified, and also at an age/grade where children who are living with an unidentified LD start to struggle more in school because of increased work demands and because NT students may be starting to catch up and surpass 2e kids in the areas the student is challenged in. For some 2e kids it will take longer and challenges will only be understood as they become more of a challenge and as the child becomes more articulate about explaining what is going on. My EG ds was first diagnosed at 9 (end of 2nd grade) but it wasn't a "complete" diagnosis - he has an expressive language disorder that didn't show up on any of the 2nd grade testing because everyone was working with the info they had at hand, and it would take another two years, continued and deepening classroom struggles, and ds maturing to a stage where he started communicating very specifically with us about what he was struggling with. I also have a 2e dd who struggles *tremendously* with reading, but was able to cover it up for her first years of elementary. Once we started to suspect there was an issue, she was tested at school, tested privately, tested privately again, etc. To this day, she does not have any generic recognizable diagnosis - but that hasn't negated the need for years of intensive tutoring and alternative reading programs. She doesn't fit any conventional diagnosis boxes, but she clearly has needed (and benefited from) help with reading.


I am not sure if you're just referring to tests such as WISC and WJ-III Achievement tests here, but I did want to point something out - my EG ds has similar spreads in his WISC etc… and they also exist in other not-so-frequently mentioned tests, such as the tests that he's received from OTs and SLPs, and the discrepancies were considered as evidence for diagnosing. These types of discrepancies might not mean anything for some kids, but for a child who's got the discrepancy *+* obvious struggles at school, it's worth trying to get to the root of what's up.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Since the school appears to be concerned about him as well, there appears to be an opening to investigate further with the school, and perhaps try some interventions or accommodations. Did the school conduct any additional assessment, besides the WISC? Do you have achievement data? (Norm-referenced, like the WJ, WIAT, or KTEA; group, like the ITBS, MAP, SAT10; curriculum-based, like DIBELS, ORF, writing fluency probes). Has higher-level phonological processing been explicitly assessed on norm-referenced instruments? (CTOPP, CTOPP-2, PAL-II) What about direct executive functioning assessments? (DKEFS, NEPSY, CCPT, TOVA) Your school may or may not have access to this last category of assessments, in which case you will have to go outside, most likely to a neuropsych.

If I am reading your post correctly, he is functioning two years below grade level in writing skills and written expression. At this grade level, most schools would consider this a qualifying academic weakness in anyone of average or above cognitive ability. In an RTI school, this would certainly call for tier 2 (or sometimes 3) interventions, regardless of cognitive ability, and might result in an eligibility decision under dual discrepancy (below grade level/poor responder to intervention). In a PSW (pattern of strengths and weaknesses) or aptitude-achievement discrepancy school, this would most certainly qualify.

So basically, most models of LD identification would consider his situation, with written expression skills two grade levels below, as quite sufficient for eligibility.

Thanks for the additional information. He has qualified for RTI, and will get an IEP to "catch him up" but I am trying to think longer than the next 6 months. Polarbear, at this point I fear we are going down the same path as you….we have had school testing, private testing etc. etc. and all seem to say the same thing. At this point I am more interested in the longer term remediation plan rather than an actual dx. Each year in October, it seems we start again. Have you found any key "words/components etc" in the intensive tutoring or alternative reading programs? We have tried a bunch and the only one that seemed to work well for him was Lindamood-Bell, but I am not sure a 9 year run of that is in my budget!