Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Testing: low working mem but high achievement?

I'm new to forums. My 10 yr old daughter took 2 acheivement tests; scored fairly high and was given IQ. The school psych stated that she really believed she would get into the gifted program based on info she had so far.

Well, she called Friday and said she received zero points on IQ portion of gifted test (had received 3 from the achievement portion of the test). She said working memory was extremely low. I have left 3 messages (with no return call) to find out which IQ test was given. I meet with school psych Friday (but thought I'd post here to get input).

My concerns: the school psych called the morning of the test to say she would not give the test; she was recovering from flu and taking meds. I told her fine, but to please call the school and let them know so that my daughter would not worry all day about the test. My daughter was already nervous, and is a quiet child who has trouble at times putting her thoughts into words. A story from her can sometimes take forever! Anyway, the school psych said she might just give half the IQ test and the rest the next day, if she felt better. She sounded a little put off when I asked her to notify the school if she didn't give the test (for my daughter's sake). Well, she ended up giving the entire test to my daughter that day. I wonder how "Into" the test the psych was? Could this affect the score?

I know that high achievement certainly does not equate to gifted, but the school psych said her recall was very low (I believe she said 30) which really brought her score down. Could her IQ be botched due to the "sick" school psych's testing? or to my daughter's nerves? It seems hard to believe that she could receive zero points from the IQ and do so well on achievement (97%) and top 2 to 5% on achievement tests for our state. We do not study much, yet she does extremely well on all work; so I just do not see how you can score so low on IQ that you do not receive one point. For me, it goes against all logic that you can have very low working memory with high achievement.

OR could this indicate some type of LD? I know that I'll learn more on Friday (and hopefully she'll return my call) but I would like to be prepared with questions as well as understand a little more before I meet with her. We are wondering if we should request a redo-I doubt they'll approve it (or find funds to hire someone). Help please?

Actually I think many people here can relate to the low working memory and the high achievement scores. It sounds like you might want to look into outside testing. Maybe the school tester is just really sick right now, but if the situation is stressing your dc out and the tester is telling you that there may be 2E issues... Well then you might want to find someone who specializes in gifted and LD to test your child. Since a private tester is often going to have a wait before they can meet with your child, you culd always set it up and cancel if the school psych starts being more responsive.

Have you done any reading about Working Memory? Does any of it jive with your experiences with dc? James Webb and Ed Amend have a book, Misdiagnosis And Dual Diagnoses Of Gifted Children And Adults, that might be a good place to start.

Agreed.

Here's a link to Wikipedia article on Working Memory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_memory

Whatever it is, it isn't felt to be much related to how smart a kid is, so, for example, programs like Davidson Young Scholars don't require high working memory on IQ tests, and have ways for kids who don't have high Working Memory to qualify with other sections of the IQ test that are more closely correlated with 'smartness.'

My guess is that your school has a point system so that kids with different strengths can be allowed into the gifted program. You daughter's over all IQ score might be 'bright but not gifted' or 'profoundly gifted but superweak in WM' or anything in between. Sadly, lots of schools use the Full Scale - sometimes psychologist will say, "I can't even truely give this child a full scale score because it's meaningless, if the variation is so wide."

If Dottie has 7 children, and I have 1, we have, on average, 4 children each. Wouldn't you be suprised at how quiet my house is if you believed that this average was meaningful?

Maybe you can convinse the psychologist to try to test your DD again on the very low test 'just to see if dd was having a bad day' - of course I'm sure this isn't allowed, but ((shrug)) who knows?

Anxiety in general can affect performance on an IQ test. If your dd truely has a low WM can this cause a person to be more anxious? Maybe - I've got superfast processing speed, and 'average' working memory: I can actually watch myself loosing track of the vaious parts of a problem I'm trying to think about at time. Not fun to walk around thinking that one might forget something important at any moment - and that one most likely has! This bothered me quite a bit when I was younger, before I had words for it. Now I know what to expect, and use pencil/paper/electronic gadgets as a temporary holding tank for mental bits. Afterall, there's nothing wrong with my long term memory storage system!

Hope that helps,
Grinity

Thanks so much for the suggestions and advice. I hope to get all of the scores on Friday. I am still confused; not so much that she didn't get into the gifted program, but that she performed so poorly on the IQ test that she didn't even earn 1 point towards qualifying. I was also told that her processing speed was very high (even though her working memory was very low). Any more advice is appreciated.

I have a couple of thoughts. I do think that it is unfortunate that they phrased it the way they did in regard to her IQ performance. Saying that she earned zero points makes it sound like she bombed the test where I'd actually expect that most kids would earn zero points if the points are awarded based upon how far above the mean the kid is. Just, for instance, looking at a tool like the Iowa Acceleration Scale, which is used for determining if a child is a good candidate for a grade skip, a child gets one point in the IQ arena if his IQ is between one to two standard deviations (SDs) above the mean, which equates to a score from around the 84th percentile to the 97th percentile. If his IQ score runs from the 98th to 99th (2-3 SDs above the mean), he gets two points, and if it is 3+ SDs above the mean (higher than the 99th percentile), he gets 3 points. That leaves a lot of bright kids (well above the 50th percentile) getting zero points, for instance.

I don't know if the "30" they gave you for her memory/recall score is a percentile. If it is and her processing speed was very high, as you indicated, it may not be pulling the full scale number down a huge amount, but probably is pulling it down some. It is possible to figure a full scale IQ using all of the pieces (memory, speed, perceptual/visual spatial skills, and verbal skills). It is also possible to drop the memory and speed tests and figure an alternative score (at least on the WISC) using just the verbal and perceptual scores. I have one child with a low processing speed score, 42nd percentile, but her IQ figured either way only varies by a few points b/c she had a very good working memory score. If both are significantly lower, as is the case with my other child, the difference between the two score configurations may be more dramatic.

Hopefully they will give you the score breakdown so you know what it looks like. As you mention, achievement is not a sure fire sign that the child is gifted but one lower ability score also isn't the be all end all of who the child is. There are certainly bright high achieving kids who are not gifted who get achievement scores like you mention. If you feel there is something more to the picture, I'd do more digging, though.