Testing gurus!!! A good friend of mine recently had her ds8 retested (formally 145 FSIQ) and got these scores:

Verbal Comprehension 116 86th percentile
Perceptual Reasoning 119 90th percentile
Working Memory 120 91st percentile
Processing Speed 112 79th percentile

Full-Scale IQ 122 93rd percentile

VCI 116
SI 15
VC 15
CO 9

PRI 119
BD 4
PCn 16
MR 19

WMI 120
DS 13
LN 14

PSI 112
CD 11
SS 7


Shouldn't they calculate a GAI based on these large discrepancies??
And also.... What are your thoughts???
Please help me help her!!

GAI simply excludes WMI and PSI, at a glance those don't look to have a big discrepancy at the index level.

Looking at the two much,much lower scores: Block Design and Symbol Search would make me want to have my kids eyes checked by a developmental optometrist or opthamologist.

For overall, they'd probably want to consider: tester/kid mix, age of original testing, health/mood on day of testing, schedule of testing session

I am not a guru BUT yes I believe a GAI should definitely be calculated. Also, my son had similar low scores in symbol search, coding and block design (but his comprehension score was always high) when he first took the WISC . He had a vision issue and he has dysgraphia. About a year later and after a year of vision therapy (ad he started doing puzzles!) his block design went up to high average but symbol search and coding still abysmal. He has dysgraphia and Ehlers Danlos. Kids with dysgraphia and fine motor skill problems do very poorly on those tests. My son would never have qualified for any gifted rpgram without a GAI calculated.

The sum of the scaled scores for VCI and PRI is 78 which translates to a GAI of 121.

Not a Guru by any stretch of the word!

The GAI would be about the same as the FSIQ. It wouldn't make a diference in this case. Typically GAI would be calculated with significant index differences.

What age was the first IQ test? What was the reason for the second test?

I know this isn't a popular view around here, but I have seen a few local kids drop dramatically after early testing. It's one of the reasons my district doesn't want to look at testing before 6 or later.

OTH, I have also seen kids that just don't seem to test well ever despite all sorts of evidence to the contrary. Did the tester give any additional information about what was happening during BD? That is the one score that rally stands out as odd or problematic.

I also calculate a GAI of 121, so the GAI is about the same as the FSIQ. However, given the scatter within the VCI and PRI, some testers would say that none of these composite scores (VCI, PRI, GAI, or FSIQ) are interpretable as an overall measure of cognitive functioning.

Also, I don't think the PSI composite score of 112 matches the subtest scaled scores of 11 and 7 that you report. The sum of these two scaled scores is 18, which is below the population mean of 20 (i.e., 10+10), so the composite score should be less than 100, my best guess would be the composite score should be about 95, not 112.

I'll add that I've seen the same thing - one with my own child. I have a dd who had early ability testing as a young 5 year old when we had taken her to see a psych for anxiety. To be honest, we were surprised at how high her scores were! She was tested again at 8 and her scores were about 20 points lower overall - and more in line with the child we know. She's still an excellent student - who might even look highly gifted to folks who are looking for that stellar straight-A kid who performs very very well in an academically challenging school setting. But she's had yet another round of IQ testing and several sets of achievement tests through school, and her later scores are what's held up, not the really high early scores.

I also know of a few families who's children tested into our local highly gifted program in kindergarten who's scores did not hold up in later testing. So I wouldn't automatically assume there was an issue with the test if scores do drop - instead I'd want to look at the overall picture - what was going on when the testing took place, is there any reason to doubt the current scores etc. I'd want to also know why the child was tested a second time - was there a concern with academic performance or worry about achievement?

And I'll second the suggestion to look into potential vision issues. Block Design and Symbol Search were the subtests that my dd who had undiagnosed double-vision totally tanked on her WISC - both depend on vision. My dd was tested by a neurospcyh, so she had an additional test that looked at vision where she also had issues. The thing is - up until that point in time where it was so clearly separated out by subtest none of us (parents, teachers, piano teacher, sports coaches etc) had any *clue* she wasn't seeing well - she'd even passed her routine eye exams with our regular eye dr with flying colors. Seeing two of everything And she was just a child, so she had no idea the rest of us weren't seeing as many "things" as she was lol!

Best wishes,

polarbear

At what age did the child test previously (the 145 score)?

At age 5 he received the FSIQ 145. Full tested now due to concerns over ADHD... Such a big drop. Very concerning for tr family.

I would definitely look into vision with such a low block design score and such a high matrix reasoning score. That seems that something is off in his vision. Matrix reasoning is a fair indicator of intelligence and his score is really high on that one.

Also - his comprehension subtest seems low comparatively. I would try to figure out why. These are social comprehension questions.

Were the concerns re ADHD due to lack of attention/focus or behaviors? My dd who had the vision challenge *looked* like she had hyperactive ADHD when she was young - she couldn't sit still. When I gave her a multi-step direction such as "pick up your socks and take them to the laundry room" she'd pick up the socks and get lost in the hall and never make it to the laundry room. She didn't look like she was having vision issues, instead she looked like she couldn't focus her brain. Those behaviors disappeared after vision therapy. Issues with vision can be tough to recognize, but there's a very clear indicator in the test scores that vision might be an issue. Not necessarily eyesight, but how well the eyes work *together*.

polarbear

ps - fwiw, I wouldn't focus on worry over the drop in overall scores - most of the scores seem relatively consistent from subtest to subtest, which (jmo) indicates that those scores are probably realistic. What I would absolutely dig into is why the coding, block design and comprehension subtests are so low relative to the other subtests - as well as trying to understand whatever behaviors/etc prompted the testing and concern re ADHD.

pps - also wanted to add - there is a component of vision involved in the coding subtest also, and it's a timed subtest. The vision requirement isn't as intense as it is in symbol search, but vision might be the reason it's semi-relatively low compared to other scores.

ppps - sorry about all the ps's! I keep thinking of "just one more thing" - anyway, when my dd was having vision issues, she didn't make eye contact. You'd look at her, and she'd look back out of the corner of her eyes. When she was working on schoolwork/reading etc, she would get her head close to the table and turn her head around in funny positions etc. She didn't like to sit in chairs and she fell out of chairs frequently. She was also a really sloppy eater - we could always tell which chair she'd sat at during dinner because of the mess of crumbs all around it, long after she'd outgrown toddlerhood. Some of that or none of that might apply to your friend's child, but if some of it sounds familiar, those again might be symptoms of a vision challenge.

Which test was each score received on? I understand that older tests experience "Flynn effect" and yield higher scores, while newer tests yield lower scores.

It was Stanford Binet LM

There are issues in norming standardized tests for kids 5 and below. They're not given to a population as large, and they can show significant differences in home environment and tolerance to testing rather than cognitive ability.

In my kid's school district, a 5yo would have to blow the lid off the test (99.5th percentile) to qualify for gifted services, but at 6 the services become far more accessible.

The question I'd be asking myself in these parents' shoes is this: which score seems more representative of my kid? The 145, or the 122?

There are only a few testers who find any value in this extremely out-of-date test, and that value is only after taking another test and hitting ceilings (and so maybe figuring out more details about particular strengths). I don't think I've heard of anyone using the LM as a starter IQ test. I would indeed imagine that many people today could get very high scores on that. In fact, I'm sure you could probably find old copies of it if you looked around.

But beyond that, how is this child doing in achievement? I wouldn't worry about the score drop if he seems to be doing well academically. Does his profile fit more with a highly gifted kid? Then don't worry about numbers.

As st pauli girl mentioned, this is an older test. It also had higher norms. There are interesting articles to be found if you do a web search.

Firstly I absolutely agree with everyone that mentions vision as a potential issue. Secondly 145 on the SB-LM probably does equate with about 120-130 on a more current test like the Sb5 or Wisc4 (both of which are about to be replaced, because they aren't that current either!). So there are two clear issues here 1) is there a vision issue and 2) are they comparing apples and oranges?