Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment validity of young test results (like WPPSI)

I feel a bit confused about IQ results that are for young kids. While the pyschologist we went to and a lot of posters here tend to say they may end up on the "low" side due to difficulty getting testing conditions just right for young kids.. however for DYS the cutoff is actually higher (at 150) then for tests for older kids Like the WISC-IV.

The reason this is relevent to me now is that my DD5 scored 147 on the WPPSI. We just had a meeting with the school principal who said that they don't even do aptitute testing until 2nd grade because the results are not reliable. She seemed to be arguing that just because my DD had matured enough to get high results, other high achievers in her class were still not there yet, but would score high in a few years. So its easier at this point when less kids are "ready" for the test, to score high. While i've never heard this argument before, and was wondering if she is just trying to put us off, it is an interesting argument and was wondering if anyone here thought it had any merit at all.

irene

I am by no means a testing expert, but there is a certain amount of validity in what they are saying. Some kids are very early readers or know their numbers and basic math facts at an early age. Other kids will acquire these skills later, but catch up very quickly. The early readers and counters (for lack of a better term) will score disproportionately high when they are tested at an early age.

You also have to allow for the fact that many young kids may not be the most cooperative test-takers, even though they have the ability to obtain high scores. This also boosts the scores of those young kids who are both able and good test-takers.

This does NOT mean, however, that high scores at an early age will necessarily go down. In fact, they may be even higher in a few years time.

Back to your current issue, the fact that the school does not like to test until 2nd grade seems to me a poor reason not to address your child's needs now. If your DD needs some sort of accomodations now, these need to be addressed.

hi Dottie
thanks for your response- i actually don't disagree and am actually a little impressed that the principal, who i was ready to really discount, even came up with this!! I had always agreed with the argument that scores are likely an underestimate at a young age but now i am thinking about what the norming sample looks like if a lot of children test "low" who are going to eventually get it together and have much higher scores in the future. I think this can inflate a score. Time will tell. We are going to retest on WISC when she's 6 and get achievement testing done then. This stuff fascinates me too, Dottie. I had to totally hold back with the principal because i was so afraid she'd think i was an absolute nut.
irene

I have to agree that a child who is able to cooperate and perform in the testing setting will score higher than a child who is just as bright who for whatever reason just wasn't able to pull it off on testing day and those fluctuations will most likely settle as the child gets older, but since IQ tests for the very young do not test reading or counting, those early skills do not play a role at all from what I gather in my limited experience. My DD at 3.4 years was asked to arrange blocks or pictures and my child wasn't even asked to count to ten though she can skip count, count backwords, do simple math etc. They didn't ask her to read one thing though she can read quite complicated words so those skills didn't play into her scores at all. One part that I did think could be inflated or deflated due to exposure was the general knowledge section of the WPPSI. I just felt that the test for someone her age didn't even get at the things I see in her that show her gifts, though in their minds she scored quite high, I just sensed there was more to be shown...

Scary, huh, Twinkles?

This is really interesting. And I just read a relevant article on this earlier in the week that was posted on some other GT listserv ... it speaks to the unreliability of using IQ style tests on preschoolers.

http://nymag.com/news/features/63427/#ixzz0eGNbT3XW

This is a really hard issue. I know some kids that looked very over the top GT at 4, that are looking MG as 3rd and 4th graders. Many of these kids attended very acadmic preschools. One child to the point, that her parents pulled her out of a GT magnet school. I know other kids that didn't stand out at all as preschoolers that came on strong after the age of 5 and 6 (including my own kid). I know adults that no one would have picked out as GT that are brilliant.

I think regardless, if you have a high achieving child, you need to advocate for that need. Kids need to be stimulated and engaged to reach their full potentials.

You and Dottie did address this with your posts a bit already, but even in the absense of reading or academic skills being directly tested on a preschool intelligence test, the home environment is more salient to the score in a younger child. It only takes getting a few hard questions right as a preschooler to significantly up your total score. A child with an enriched environment and one in which he is exposed to a larger spoken vocabulary is at an advantage in terms of how he will test on vocabulary sections, general knowledge questions, and possibly even abstract reasoning questions.

I'm not certain if this is the study I am recalling, but I do recall from a psychometrics class I took a while back that there have been studies that indicate that an adopted child's measured IQ as a child will be similar to that of his/her adoptive parents due to environmental influences. Over time, as the child becomes an adult, his/her measured IQ will much more closely match that of his/her biological parents due to the environmental impacts lessening. Thus my recall from that class that IQ is not considered fully stable until later childhood.

Hi again all,
these are my DD5s actual scores on the WPPSI from when she was a month shy of her fifth birthday. I posted them the first day i found this site but it feels like a whole "education" ago.. After reading everyones thoughts on this thread, i am looking at these scores and thinking if "Information" being her highest test might suggest the environment influence.

Also I remember reading a post from Dottie (i think) saying that high scores on certain subtests suggest a gifted profile more than others. So wondering if any thoughts there. BTW she is not an especially early reader (starting to read fluently this year in K). Again we didn't do real achievement testing but the psychologist did mention that with scores like this he'd expect her to be reading and be very interested in academics.. which at the time she was definitely not, though that has picked up this year in K.

VIQ: 145
PIQ: 140
Processing speed index: 131
FSIQ: 147

Sub tests
Information 19
Vocabulary 17
Word Reasoning 16
Block Design 17
Matrix Reas. 15
Pic. Concepts 17
Coding 17

irene

Those are all quite high scores, so it isn't just that information is high. With a FSIQ that high, I'd expect that she is gifted even if she was young when she was tested. I'd be less certain saying that for sure if her scores weren't that high. The extent or level of giftedness if probably something that you won't know quite yet, though.

Your daughter's results are really high and while they may turn out to be higher I would fully expect her to be gifted, most likely HG.

What I find really interesting is the following comparison.

DS5 WPPSI results are not that different (99.9% PIQ and FSIQ, VIQ was in 140's). Today he finished reading the 4th book of Harry Potter. He has been reading forever and reads pretty much anything he can get his hands on. He can multiply, divide, add and subtract with carrying over, knows negative numbers, does pretty well with word problems, etc.

I don't intend to brag, I only want to point out that the achievement testing is probably a huge part of the equation.

I thought that kids with similar high scores have quite similar achievement test results as well. It shows how little I still know or perhaps that my idea of HG+ is completely messed up thanks to DS7. Perhaps the comparison works better when the IQ is administered later on.