Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Help with test results please

Hi! I've been lurking for a while, and finally decided to speak up.

Ds5 took the WPPSI a few weeks ago and we just got his scores yesterday. I have been going through them and trying to interpret them, but I need a little help. I know he ceilinged on at least one subtest, because he answered every question right, but could he have ceilinged on any of the others?

Also, he scored a lot lower on one subtest than the rest. Does this indicate a problem area? The tester was the school psychologist, not a specialist in gifted testing, especially at his age. She didn't seem to think the lower score was anything to worry about.

So, here are his scores. Any thoughts are welcome.

Verbal:
Information - Raw 34, Scaled 19, Age Equiv >7.2, 99.9% (this is the one he answered every question right on)
Vocabulary - Raw 31, Scaled 14, Age Equiv >7.2, 91%
Word Reasoning - Raw 24, Scaled 15, Age Equiv >7.2, 95%
Composite 137

Performance:
Block Design - Raw 32, Scaled 15, Age Equiv >7.2, 95%
Matrix Reasoning - Raw 22, Scaled 15, Age Equiv >7.2, 95%
Picture Concepts - Raw 16, Scaled 11, Age Equiv 6.2, 63%
Composite 123

Processing Speed:
Symbol Search - Raw 29, Scaled 14, Age Equiv 7.2, 91%
Coding - Raw 48, Scaled 14, Age Equiv >7.2, 91%
Composite 122

Sum of scaled scores: 103
Full composite: 133

Thanks! I was a little surprised at the 133, as he seems to meet many of the charatceristics for higher levels of giftedness. He did make the cutoff for the local GT program, which we will be doing to supplement homeschooling. I have met with the teacher and like her a lot so far.

As for a retest, I had thought of doing that in about 2 years, probably on the WISC. What achievement tests would you recommend?

I agree with Dottie. Our DS (5.10) at the time of testing on WIAT would not have had any reading scores (except for word reading). Luckily the tester used out of level testing (pretended that DS was year older) and that gave us additional reading comprehension and pseudoword decoding, at which point she could calculate the reading composite. But these are not official, although she still included the scores in her report.
WJ has timed portion of the test and higher ceilings, WIAT is untimed with lower ceilings (160).

In my DS's situation, the testing scores on WPPSI-III seem to be an underestimate, compare to scores later on SB-5 (at which point he also hit several ceilings, LOL).

So what are the benefits of timed testing vs untimed? I think higher ceilings would be good, but I don't know what the timed tests are supposed to show. Processing speed maybe?

We did WJ for my DD6, and I am glad we had the timed sections. We now have reading/writing/math fluency scores. It is really useful to know where she stands. I thought she might not be too fast with her arithmetic operations and writing. Now we know that she had a very good writing fluency score and a good and solid math fluency as well. For me, this is important since it adds more information. If we were ever to consider a grade skip, we know from her scores that she'd be able to handle it. We also realized that she is faster with numbers than what we thought, so even if that was her lowest score of al the subtests (97th percentile); it is still pretty good.

It really depends on the child. Some are very fast, some are not so much. They can still do very hard problems, it just takes them a little longer. My son is not good with timed tests, it seems like he can not focus if he knows he is being timed. For him was better the WIAT, even though his score was limited by the ceiling.

My dd also scored much higher in the non-timed sections, but we did get valuable information from the timed tests. She probably would have done better on the non-timed WIAT; but again, it gave me good perspective.

I think the achievement tests may give me more of the info I was looking for, in terms of where he is and how to meet him there. I was hoping for more info about the best ways to teach him, but this doesn't appear to be that kind of test. And the tester basically just said he was cooperative and focused, and worked through the whole test with no problems. Of course, the test only took about 35 minutes, so it wasn't all that long.

Are there other types of tests that would tell me more about his learning style? This is our second year homeschooling and I am getting a feel for it, but sometimes he seems better with visual learning, and sometimes better with auditory learning.

Thanks for the continuing input!

I have been reading some of the other posts about testing, and am starting to wonder if ds5.9 was properly tested. He was only given 1 test (WPPSI), and only verbal, processing, and performance - he was not given the general language subtest. He was also not given any achievement tests. And the WPPSI only took 35 minutes or so to administer. I had nothing to compare it to at the time, but seeing the range of tests discussed here and the combinations of tests, I am wondering why ds was tested so...minimally?

Truscifi,
the WPPSI and it's sub tests look the same, what my DS was tested with for the first time, to see if he would qualify for gifted program at public schools. It did take a little longer, maybe an hour I am estimating.
I think that it is the standard under 6 years of age. However, because your DS was almost 6 at the time, I would wonder if the test was limiting to his capabilities. I know my DS hit several ceilings and he was not even 5 at the time.
Knowing what I know now, I would have requested the SB-5, which has much higher ceilings even at such a young age.
I would definitely request the achievement test to go with the IQ. To me it is a very important part in trying to understand these little kids minds.