Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment WJ 111 Test scores

Hi there,

My son had his full psycho-educational IQ achievement testing done.

There was quite a lot of scatter on the subtests. On some of them as low as 7% percentile and others as high as 99.9% percentile. As far as the educational psychologist is concerned he has no learning disorder and is not gifted. I'm just wondering if we care about scatter, or is it not even a thing?

Thanks.

Thanks so much for replying.

We had him tested for a few reasons (it was privately done), two of his 4 teachers since Kindergarten have suggested he may have high functioning Autism, we also have suspected since he was young as he gets obsessed by certain subjects, even from a young age and his brother is diagnosed ASD. ADHD was also suggested - without the hyperactivity part. He has an amazing long term memory - not a very good short term. He is all over the place in school, doing really well in some things and really poorly others etc. He never does homework, maybe 4 times since kindy (he's just finished year 3) but will sit down and research something he is really interested in for hours (science, Japanese symbols etc) He doesn't follow instructions well, he seems to get muddled with it. She didn't diagnose any conditions, but did pick up a receptive language delay and processing delays.

He started reading at a normal age, took the normal amount of time, was actually behind his peers in kindy, year one, two and then this year his reading has gotten better. He is a natural speller, also something that has just shown itself this year. I guess I want to know if these scores suggest perhaps further investigation for things like ASD, ADHD etc.



His results are as follows; (IQ test scores)
General intellectual ability - score not given, but she says that he is at the 73rd percentile.
Crystalised Intelligence - Verbal Ability Score 101 - 53rd percentile
Fluid Intelligence - Thinking ability score 113 - 82nd percentile
Cognitive Efficiency - Cognitive efficiency score 116 - 85th percentile

Cluster Ability - Comprehension Knowledge overall score 101 - 53rd percentile
Lexical knowledge - Verbal Comprehension score 100 - 51st percentile
General knowledge - General information score 102 - 54 percentile
Lexical knowledge - Picture vocabulary score 98 - 46th percentile

Cluster Ability - Long-term retrieval (overall score not calculated)
Ideation fluency - Retrieval fluency score 83 - 13th percentile
Associative Memory - Visual-auditory Learning 99 - 48th percentile

Cluster ability - Auditory processing (overall score not calculated)
Resistance to auditory stimuli distortion - auditory attention score 118 - 88 percentile
Phonetic coding - sound blending score 153 - >.99 percentile

Phonetic Awareness (overall score not calculated)
Phonetic coding - sound blending score 153 - >.99th percentile
Phonetic coding - incomplete words score 100 - 51st percentile

Cluster Ability - Visual spatial Thinking score 104 - 59th percentile
Visualisation - Spatial relations score 108 - 71st percentile
Visual memory - Picture recognition score 97 - 43rd percentile
Visual Attention - Pair cancellation score 95 - 37th percentile
Visual scanning - visual matching score 89 - 22nd percentile

Cluster Ability - Fluid reasoning score 94 - 35th percentile
Inductive reasoning - concepts formation score 90 - 27th percentile
Deductive reasoning - Analysis Synthesis score 102 - 56th percentile

Cluster ability - processing speed (overall score not calculated)
Perceptual speed - Visual matching score 89 - 22nd percentile
Perceptual speed- Decision speed score 101 - 53rd percentile

Cognitive fluency (overall score not calculated )
Perceptual speed - Rapid picture naming score 86 - 17th percentile
Ideation fluency - Retrieval fluency score 83 - 13th percentile

Cluster ability - Short-term memory (overall score not calculated)
Memory span - Memory for words score 124 - 94th percentile
Working memory Capacity - Numbers reversed score 100 - 75th percentile

Working memory (overall score not calculated)
Working memory capacity - Numbers reversed score 110 - 75th percentile
Working memory capacity - Auditory working memory 124 - 95th percentile

Type of Attention
Selective attention -auditory attention score 118 - 88th percentile
Sustained attention - Pair cancellation score 95 - 37th percentile
Attention Capacity - Numbers reversed score 110 - 75th percentile
Divided Attention - Auditory working memory score 124 - 95th percentile
Shifting attention - inhibition score 11

Achievement component

Cluster - Reading (score not calculated)
Reading accuracy - word attack score 131 - 98th percentile
Reading accuracy - Letter-word recognition score 126 - 96th percentile
Reading comprehension - passage comprehension score 98 - 44th percentile
Reading rate - Reading fluency score 91 - 28th percentile

Cluster - Broad written language (score not calculated)
Spelling accuracy - spelling of sounds score 122 - 93rd percentile
spelling accuracy - spelling score 122 - 93rd percentile
Written expression - writing samples score 119 - 90th percentile
Writing rate - Writing fluency score 78 - 7th percentile

Cluster Broad Math (overall score not calculated)
Calculation accuracy - calculation score 98 - 46th percentile
Calculation rate - Math fluency score 88 - 21st percentile
Math reasoning - Applied problems score 106 - 65th percentile

Cluster ability Oral Language (extended) score 91 - 27th percentile
Listening comprehension score 85 - 15th percentile
Receptive language - understanding directions score 87 - 20th percentile
Receptive language - Oral comprehension score 89 - 23rd percentile

Oral expressions overall score 97 - 42nd percentile
Expressive Language - Picture vocabulary score 98 - 46th percentile
Expressive language - Story recall score 94 - 35th percentile

Cluster - Fine motor functioning
Writing rate - writing fluency score 78 - 7th percentile
Legibility - Handwriting score 95 - 36th percentile

General academic performance
Phonological-graphme knowledge and academic skills, fluency and applications
Phoneme-Grapheme knowledge score 130 - 98th percentile
Academic skills score 124 - 94th percentile
Academic fluency score 82 - 12th percentile
Academic Applications 109 - 72nd percentile

Sorry, turned 9 in August.

His testing does not support being gifted (the GIA is 109), but it does support weaknesses in fine motor skills, fluency skills (both motor and motor-free), and receptive language, and exceptionally good phonological processing, in aspects of phonological awareness and phonological memory. His outstanding PP skills are likely behind his strong word-level decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling) skills. Comprehension, however, is only on par with his assessed cognition (which is what I generally expect). Some might say this is consistent with the hyperlexic presentation that is sometimes associated with autism spectrum disorders. The fluency weakness (especially in both motor-involved and motor-free conditions) is not an unusual finding in dysgraphics, as it is one of the core deficits.

Regarding ASD, though, the more important assessments--beyond establishing normal or above cognition, to rule out global developmental delay as an explanation--are those having to do with reciprocal social communication and interaction, and restricted/repetitive behaviors. The WJ does not address those areas of development. If you wanted ASD assessment, you would have needed some additional instruments, interviews, and observations. The ADOS-2 is the gold standard, but some survey instruments can pick up valuable information, like the GARS-3 or the SRS-2, both designed for assessing autistic-associated social communication behavior and RRB.

Aeh, thanks so much you are a wealth of knowledge. I'll arranged to have him tested for ASD, hopefully we'll get to the bottom of this. Cheers.

aeh - would those scores raise potential questions about visual processing to you?

Platypus, our dysgraphic ds has similar low subtest scores on the WJ-III Cog/Ach - he was tested using the WJ-III at 11, with significantly discrepant scores in fluency subtests and the visual-matching subtest.

Dysgraphia can have different root causes, either fine-motor or related to visual challenges. In my ds' case, the dysgraphia is related to fine-motor challenges. The way we determined that is through additional tests run by his neuropsychologist: the Beery VMI (this is a test of visual motor integration) and a finger-tapping test (I think it was part of the Nepsy, but don't remember for certain - can look it up later if you'd like).

Dysgraphics also have different abilities re spelling depending upon the type of dysgraphia. One type has spelling challenges, another doesn't. My ds was always an excellent speller on spelling tests, but spelling while writing is a mess. Bees, you might want to google "dysgraphia types" to find an explanation of the different ways dysgraphia presents and see if any of it relates to your ds.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Not exceptionally so. Most of this child's visual processing-related scores are solidly average. The ones that are not are all related to speed. My working hypothesis at this point would be that the speed/fluency deficit is not so much fine-motor speed, as a more cognitive process, like retrieval fluency/efficiency. I base this on the pattern of weaknesses, which includes many different tasks affected by retrieval fluency, including ones that are completely absent visual or motor demands (like the one tagged ideational fluency). There is not a marked additional drop when fluency tasks add fine-motor or visual tracking demands, which suggests that whatever impact they may have is minimal.

I'll also take this opportunity to clarify that, if this child is actually on the autistic spectrum, it is possible that cognitive scores will go up over the years. In my experience, the test-taking process is not always a best fit for autistic students, especially in their young years. As they mature, and learn the rules of school and social interactions a little better, they sometimes become better test-takers. I had a student whose triennial testing rose gradually, from the upper end of Average in elementary school, to High Average at the beginning of high school (when I first tested him), to Very Superior by his last eval, at the end of high school--with that last measure still a likely low estimate.

So when I say "the scores do/do not support", that's all I mean. Children with exceptionalities, by definition, do not test just like NT children. This is a snapshot of how this child performs under standardized conditions, at this point in time, on these specific skills.

Ah ok, she did say that a lot of his low scores were to do with the timed aspect of the test, he had some good answers but couldn't get them all out fast. She has suggested that the school give him more timed tests to practise. Which would be to do with the retrieval scores I'm guessing. I'll have a look at dysgraphia. And we have been on the waiting list for a developmental paediatrician regarding his weaknesses.

Thank you Portia, that is very kind.