Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment my turn to request WISC-IV parsing!

Hi, all!

DS was tested on WISC-IV at age 9 yr 8 mo. Scores are below. What do you read in the tea leaves? How do the "extra" subtests fit into the scoring and into the big picture?

VCI - 136 (99%ile)
SIM 17
VOC 16
COM 15
INF (15)

PRI - 133 (99%ile)
BD 17
PC 14
MR 15
PComp (17)

WMI - 123 (94%ile)
DS 15
LNS 13
AR (16)

PSI - 126 (96%ile)
CO 11
SS 18

FSIQ 138 (99%ile)

He also took the Conners Continuous Performance Test, which showed him at 97%ile for ADHD-Impulsive Type. The psych also noted that the boy is very anxious and very sensitive, and the anxiety causes impulsive responses, which in turn make him more anxious, etc.

Thoughts?

Oh no you don't! I'm putting my eggs squarely in the "I can squish him into optimally gifted" basket and you can't take that away from me!

Thank you, Dottie, for the analysis.

I wonder what's up with that low Coding score. Isn't coding sort of like those cryptogram puzzles, where you substitute a particular letter everywhere its assigned symbol appears, like XQC spells CAT when X=C, Q=A, and C=T?

I'd venture to say that, even if these scores are spot on, he's going to be more than optimally gifted in most schools.

I'm also seriously jealous of your even child! My kiddos both had scores ranging from 8-19 on the WISC-IV.

Yes, I was very relieved to see that WMI and PSI were fairly well in the same neighborhood as VCI and PRI. I've learned so much on this board - including worrying about bottlenecks holding back the horsepower!

I'm with C2 - 11 is seriously "High" for a coding score at my house!
It's a quite dull test, and if ADHD is part of the mix I think getting an 11 is miraculously high.

I don't know if you can stuff him into the OG box, but with the ADHD you might get away with:
'HG plus ADHD' cancels each other out to get OG.

Really - tea leaves say - rock solid balanced!
Grinity

I've, too, have learned a lot here and over the years of figuring my girls out (which remains a work in progress). I think that I was one of those kids who fit well into what the schools offered b/c my one IQ testing put my PSI above the 99th percentile. Fast plus smart seems to be what fit well in GT programs (plus, I don't think that I am quite as able as your ds, so I wasn't hampered by being too smart for the programming at least once I hit high school). Having two slower kids has been an eye-opener for me.

Remember that just because the Connors CPT thinks he has ADHD doesn't mean that he does. That's why we get paid to interpret scores. Anxiety can *totally* present as impulsivity in a kid who is fast in the first place.

I agree that there's nothing here that draws concern -- the Coding score is often the low score in GT kids. Handwriting is often the reason, perfectionism another common reason. The Arithmetic score is high because he's good at math -- it's a weird confound and I have no earthly idea why PsychCorp keep it around as a test (it's core on the new WAIS, which is IMHO pretty silly, given the broad differences between individuals in the population in terms of comfort with even the very simple math problems on that subtest).