aeh-

1. The psychologist gave all regular tests and all substitute tests from the WISC-IV, but planned in advanced to use only the regular tests for the actual computations of scores; all subtest scores are recorded in the report, however. Here's what the report says about "ceilings." DD#2 "reached a ceiling on all but the Information subtest. If the discontinue rule has not been invoked, then it is likely that even more difficult questions could have been answered correctly if
they had been presented. Thus, it could be expected that [DD#2's] verbal comprehension composite score would be even higher had the test had more questions. As such, her current Verbal Comprehension Index of 155 should be considered an underestimate of [DD#2's] true verbal ability." Although she did not put a similar verbal description like this with regard to the PRI, all 4 of the PRI subscores are ALSO marked "ceiling effect", just like all but the Information subscore of the VCI tests are marked "ceiling effect". I think this means that she missed questions as she went along, but she still ran through the end of each of these tests, without ever meeting the discontinue criterion (?). So I suppose that the PRI could also be considered a possible underestimate of her ability in that area (?). As to your specific question, the psychologist did apply extended norms, but the only subtest in which it made a difference was Vocabulary, where she scored 20. DD#2 often feels nervous about being wrong, and will not volunteer in most classes at school unless there is an objectively right answer to something and she is certain that she is right. So I had told her before the WISC-IV and WJ-III testing that there was no penalty for wrong answers and she should feel free to answer when she wasn't sure she was right and even just "guess". However, even though she felt relatively comfortable with the psychologist (one of the reasons I decided to get this testing done preemptively, because I knew that rapport could matter hugely for DD#2), DD#2 still told me afterward that she refused to answer some questions when she wasn't sure she was right. In fact, she was able to immediately tell me of some particular vocabulary words that she thought she knew but hadn't been willing to "guess" on, and I asked her to tell me what they meant, and her answers seemed accurate and articulate to me. So I am sure that a 20 on Vocabulary was an underestimate in that sense. I think the same happened on the Information subtest. For example, there is a calendar item on that test (this was later mentioned in the psychologist's report) that most younger children have memorized, but DD#2 wasn't sure of the answer, so she said she didn't know, but she would have gotten it right if had been multiple choice. She said the same thing about the Vocabulary subtest: "I wish it were multiple choice". Not so much because she couldn't recall the answer, but because she wasn't sure of the answer and didn't want to volunteer if she was wrong. I believed using the extended norm for the 20 on the Vocabulary subtest changed her VCI by a couple of points, but I don't remember exactly. It wasn't a huge difference. Apparently by age 10, she could run out all of the GAI tests, regular and supplemental (except Information), but missed enough questions along the way that the extended norms didn't make too much of a difference for her. Of course, now I wish I had had her tested when she was younger. I didn't have DD#1 tested until she was 13, really just as part of an ADHD evaluation (and with people not experienced with gifted kids who didn't even seem to know about extended norms), and of course, she didn't meet discontinue criteria on anything either. At least I got this one in at age 10.5.

3. I misspoke. I can see that PSI can be relevant for dyslexia. But given that the Cancellation tests were dramatically lower (Symbol Search at 33 percentile, Coding at 33 Percentile, Cancellation Random at 16 percentile, Cancellation Structured at 5 percentile), I was thinking that this leans toward vision versus dyslexia (considering only those two things and not other possibilities like tendency to avoid all risk of error). Of course, the two Cancellation tests were the last tests of a couple of hour testing period.

We had the second day of visual testing today. They didn't tell us anything, but will prepare a report and then we'll have a conference about it.