How common is it to have WM be the highest score (more than a standard deviation above the other scores, gifted range), and does that mean anything to anyone?
I don't think it's very common, at least not among the people who post on forums like this (I have no idea how common or uncommon any of us really are so can't judge just from that!). My youngest dd has an very high WM (> 2 SD above some of her scores, > 3 SD above others). Overall, she's a HG, but not EG/PG. She's also only had one IQ test, one time, and it was the WJ-III, not the WISC, so I can't quite compare apples to apples. She's really good at math, but all of her scores point to that being a strong point.
Also, I'm concerned that he's gotten into the habit of working fast without thinking carefully, due to the teachers he's had the last few years. (Processing speed was average.) I'm a little concerned that he'll behave similarly during the testing...
We've had this same challenge with our dd - she works really fast (I suspect because she has such a strong WM)... and she rushes through school work and makes careless mistakes. She's a bit of a puzzle because she's also 2e (which mostly impacts her reading)... and we're constantly having to sort out if a problem with school work is due to her 2e-ness or due to rushing through her work, and she uses that extreme WM to her advantage to hide the 2e challenges.
Our dd has also not done terribly well on standardized testing - she's only been through it once, last year in 2nd grade, and her grades (particularly math) were quite a bit lower than either us (parents) or her teachers expected them to be. I have no idea at this point in time if that was due to her rushing through without thinking about anything, if she got off track on a bubble sheet, or if she really couldn't answer the questions. I doubt it was a case of not being able to answer the questions, because she does very well in an advanced academics school and she after-schools in math for fun. I can absolutely see her rushing through the test just to get it done and not thinking she needs to check her work.
polarbear
