Sorry to join the party so late, but could we return to the bottleneck issue? We are having some difficulty and I'm not quite sure how to analyze it.
DS8 appears to have a bottleneck in writing only. On the WISC-IV he had a 42 point difference between the PRI and WMI scores, and a 29 pt spread between the PRI and PSI, although the WMI was in the high average and the PSI was in the superior category. He is fine doing math in his head, although he seems to want to calculate his multiplication table facts anew in his head each time instead of memorizing them, much to the dismay of his math teacher and her timed math tests. But the thing that really slows him down is trying to write. He described it to his teacher as "trying to write is like trying to catch one fish out of a whole school." He wants to "see" the entire story in his mind, from beginning to end, before he can start to write it down. And by the time that he has found the ending in his mind, he suddenly can't remember how he got there. I have tried to get him to outline his ideas, in order to create a mental map of how he arrived at the end of the story. But we are not having a lot of luck.
So far this discussion has been about math facts when describing a "deep, but slow" kid. Is there anyone with an experience of a slow kid with respect to writing? His verbal skills are quite high, and his reading level is significantly above his grade level. He can rattle off these wild and imaginative stories verbally at a fast pace. But when you put a pencil in his hand and ask him to write it all down, he freezes up. Note, he can write down science facts fairly well without any trouble. So I don't think it is fine motor skill-writing issue. It is more an inability to capture the thoughts in his mind as they go racing by.
OTOH, science facts are these neat little well defined bundles that his mind can parse out. They are not these large, freely-structured, amorphous creatures of imaginative writings.
Does this make any sense? Does anyone have any suggestions?
Also, now that I go back and preview this post, I realize that he has a much bigger spread between his PRI and the WMI/PSI. (even though he is not as slow with math calculations). The difference between his VCI-WMI=29 and VCI-PSI=16. ??????
