My son had his assessment done with the WISC V and his results are quite surprising to us. He was assessed for Adhd, autism as he is not that good with his social skills in terms of articulation, has poor handwriting and is inpulsive with poor time awareness. He is a left handed so not sure of this is typical of the general left handed population.

The physcoligist has assessed that he does not have adhd or autism, but he is also not given an FSIQ or GAI as he has significant gaps between his scores, VCI < VSI etc


VCI- 116
VSI - 132
FRI - 121
WMI - 100
PSI- 141
FSIQ - not given.


Subtest scores
Verbal comprehension
Similarities 11 63th
vocabulary 15 95th

Visual spatial
Block design 16 98th
Visual puzzle 15 95th

Fluid reasoning
Matrix reasoning 12 75th
Figure weights 15 95th

Working memory
Digit span 10 50th
Picture span 10 50th

Processing speed
Coding 16 98th
Symbol search 18 99.6th

What do these scores mean? Am I right to say my son is a visual spatial learner? Is his relatively low WM and VCI typical of a specific learning disorder or learning style?

Does anyone know how to calculate a GAI or FSiQ for this profile ? ( just for my own curiosity) I can't work it out.

Some items that stand out to me: his VCI is not really made up of consistent subtests. His concrete verbal ability (vocabulary) is at the same level as his visual spatial scores. What was not as strong was verbal reasoning--making connections between two verbal concepts. Similarly, between the two fluid reasoning subtests, his quantitative reasoning was on a par with his visual spatial thinking, but matrix reasoning, which is more abstract, was in the Average range. His working memory is also in the Average range. His PSI says that he is very efficient with rote visual tasks. In that sense, one could say that he has a visual preference based in his working memory profile, having more to do, possibly, with his stronger performance when provided with a model to work from, than when required to hold everything in his memory.

I suspect that the relative weaknesses are not in VCI or FRI per se, but in pulling together, or integrating, various skills or concepts. This would fit with the social deficits you are reporting, without meeting criteria for being on the autistic spectrum, as accurate social perception and social problem-solving require a lot of inference. Your perception of ADHD-like symptoms is also not unreasonable, when you combine personal relative weaknesses in working memory (closely associated with attention), and unusually high speed, which can come across as impulsivity, even if it is not.

You should not be able to calculate a GAI or FSIQ without access to a manual. I do have one, and could take a look at it when I'm in my office, but I would agree with your evaluator that neither one is really the best measure of his abilities, given the significant diversity of index scores.

Thanks for taking the time to help make sense of this to me. So should perhaps bring this back up with the evaluator? Actually we had our son assessed because he is struggling to cope with his second language (compulsory) in school mainly because of his poor time awareness. Here in my country one is only permitted exemption from second language if diagnosed under Adhd, autism or dyslexia. But because the evaluator said he doesn't meet the criteria, we aren't sure how to help our son...

Am back again a year later. I am wondering if anyone are experienced to be able to interpret my sons IQ results and profile and feedback if they believe he could be possibly having attention deficit disorder? His expressive language is also a weaker component on his results. Thanks in advance.

I don't think you can diagnose ADHD based on an IQ test. There are other inventories that the psych should be able to give you and some of them do computerized testing (although I'm not sure how accurate it is, since my ADHD dd scored in the average range on the computer testing).

working memory and processing speed (esp. working memory) tend to be lower in those w/ ADHD but not necessarily. My DD had slow processing speed but high working memory. In real life, she has poor working memory, for instance yesterday she had her instrument in her hand to go to band, then halfway there I realized she didn't bring it out the door. Scattered, disorganized...those are signs of poor working memory. WISC didn't pick that up and she's great at repeating strings of digits. Ask her to memorize names of capitals, though, and that's very hard for her. She is very slow in school because of how distracted she is. She'll be in the middle of a math problem and can't recall 9X7, so loses focus and starts looking around the room. Not everyone w/ ADHD has that trait though. She has a really hard time with distracting sights and sounds. If she tried to do math and someone near her was humming, whispering, or tapping their pencil, that would be the end of her.