Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Help interpreting WISC-V Results

As the parent of a child with DCD, I"ll respectfully disagree with the psychologist's statement that processing speed isn't a concern at your DS's age. I would re-word the statement to say that "a challenge related to processing speed isn't as likely to be noticed in 1st grade as it will be in 2nd grade (or whatever grade applies), due to the nature and amount of classwork. *However* - just because parents/teacher/psychologist don't notice it "mattering" at this point in time, doesn't mean that the child who's living with it hasn't already noticed the impact of it. Our ds received his DCD diagnosis from a neuropsychologist at the end of his 2nd grade school year. We didn't go to the neurospych looking for the answer to fine motor challenges, we went to the neuropsych because our ped referred us to the neuropsych when our ds became so severely anxious about school he was having panic attacks and not sleeping at night. The severe anxiety had resulted from having to cope in school with an undiagnosed LD. If everything is going well at school and your ds is happy, then it's probably ok to wait a year - but if there are any signs he's struggling in any way, I'd want to follow up on the possibility that the dip in coding represents something meaningful.


This sounds odd. It's been years, and our ds' test was the WISC-IV, so I don't know what the coding test looks like specifically on the WISC-V - but fwiw, when our ds was first tested for a gifted program in kindergarten, we were shown the marks he had to make on the coding test, and if I remember correctly there was space to make quite a few marks. I wonder if what the psych's statement meant was that he was assuming with extra time your ds would only have been able to add a very small number of answers, and hence it "wouldn't make a difference" when the slightly improved coding subtest score was averaged.


Yet if the processing speed is reflecting a challenge, wouldn't it be better to know *now* and give yourself that full extra year - *early* to help your ds learn how to use accommodations and to help remediate where possible? Time is precious in so many ways. If we'd known a full year earlier about our ds' challenges we could have spared him a school year that was beyond frustrating for him. We could have had that extra year to work on his accommodations and learning how to us his technology. At 7 he would have been much more willing to use a laptop in class than he was at 10 when he finally had an IEP in place.

You have one set of indications already that the dip in processing speed might be real - you also see a dip in his Block Design score, which is timed. One other thing you might be able to do is to request a full report from his achievement testing (including subtest scores). If he's taken a test like WJ-III or WIAT, then you might see a discrepancy in scores on timed vs untimed tests. If you see a discrepancy, then that backs up the notion that the dip in WISC processing speed may be related to a real challenge, rather than an external factor such as fatigue when taking the subtest etc.


No, although some eye drs (including our dr) are now incorporating a brief screen which may show issues with tracking and brief screens to check for double vision and peripheral vision. Although these brief screens aren't as thorough as what a Developmental Optometrist will do in an eval, they would have caught my dd (who had double vision as well as tracking issues). Our eye dr would then have referred her to the DO for the more thorough screening.

Best wishes,

polarbear

So I looked up the norm tables, and, as I thought, the explanation of coding and symbol search given is, at best, incomplete. Given the scaled scores you reported, it is impossible that the number of correct items could have been 5 and 8, respectively. (Scaled scores would have been much lower.) So something became garbled in that communication. The grain of truth is that processing speed is weighted less heavily in the FSIQ on the WISC-V than on the WISC-IV (1 out 7, vs 2 out of 10, previously), so that a low score on coding (the subtest that contributes to the FSIQ) should have less impact on overall performance. That being said, I would seek clarification from the psychologist. Or another psychologist.

Coding and Symbol Search both involve significant visual tracking. Especially Coding, which usually requires constant visual referencing, up and down on the page, in addition to horizontal scanning across the lines. And there are no visual frames at the age 6-7 level.

A quick comment re vision exams. You need to see a developmental optometrist. Because of different issues, my DS (then 8) saw two optometrists and a pediatric ophthalmologist. None of them caught the significant issues that th dev opt found, which included double vision, convergence and divergence insufficiency and tracking, among others. If you can get a referral within your local community for a developmental optometrist who is great with gifted kids, that would be preferred.