Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Woodcock Johnson for IQ?

Brownie, my kids have all had the WJ-III Test of Cognitive Abilities, and my 2e ds who has a fine motor disability has also taken the WISC. There is one subtest on the WJ-III that he tanked thanks to his fine motor challenge, but I do agree with your neuropsych that the WJ-III is slightly less impacted by fine motor challenges. OTOH, there is no way to "remove" the fine motor impact like there is with the WISC, where you can calculate a GAI to use in place of FSIQ (by removing WM and PS scores).

Honestly, I like the WJ-III better than the WISC - if you get a full report from the neuropsych that groups the different subtests together in multiple ways - for me it is much clearer and gives more detail about relative strengths and weaknesses. Our school district psych likes it because it has less of a ceiling issue than the WISC (please don't quote me on this -I'm not a testing expert)... but fwiw my ds hits the hard ceiling on some of the WISC subtests and didn't hit any ceilings on the WJ-III.

The one gotcha I might ask about before testing is - will your school district recognize the WJ-III? They should, but that's one potential gotcha to watch out for when using private testing to advocate for an IEP. OTOH, if it's executive function issues you're worried about - I'm guessing you're going to be relying on those types of neuropsych tests too? OK, I'm rambling now!

Good luck,

polarbear

ps - when I mentioned you can't calculate an "FSIQ" taking out the PS/etc type subtests on the WJ-III... don't overthink or worry about that.. my ds has to rely on GAI on the WISC due to his fine motor issue impacting the ability to calculate FSIQ, and the subtest impacted by fine motor on the WJ-III came out even lower percentile on the WJ-III than the WISC... but his WJ-III GIA (equivalent of FSIQ) came out higher than his GAI on the WISC and didn't seem to be hopelessly impacted.