And therein lies the problem...I don't know if it was a testing anomaly for DS or not. The psych mentioned a few things. A) DS mentally fatigues easily and that if he had done the testing over 2days he would have scored higher and B) he might need extra time on the SAT and C) DS definitely has issues w/ things being too easy. He missed easy questions and got all the hardest ones on Block Design right which of course lowered his score even though he went to the hardest ones. As the questions got harder, DS perked up significantly, the psych said.
The mental fatigue I definitely saw when I brought him to homeschool. His sustained effort was on the matter of minutes before he was asking for a break. After a few months, this is now up to a couple of hours. I attribute this to mainly being underchallenged in school and not having to sustain mental effort and therefore those brain muscles had atrophied.
Other than that, I don't really see any issues but then he's my first so perhaps i don't know what to look for. After reading up on executive function, I think those are where his issues lie rather than intellectual. I'm intrigued w/ laziness being confused w/ executive function issues. He has an issue w/ time that I think most have....time flies when you're having fun and drags when you aren't. I think he needs practice in setting goals and then putting in the effort to achieve that goal. I think most of his slowness w/ math facts for example is lack of effort. He just sees no need to be faster when he can calculate the answer in his head whereas most kids are content to put forth the effort to memorize and be done with it. I don't think it points to slower processing ... just an unwillingness to do so. When he's challenged, I don't see an issue. I recall his teacher being shocked that she gave him two step word problems to challenge him and he did them all in his head very, very quickly. We play those card memory games and DS is much better than I am at it.
Although, as others mentioned here, the more I read the more I take these tests w/ a grain of salt. My friend's DD scored 125 on VCI on WISCIV. A different psych gave her a quickie Verbal IQ test which put her 145+ ... that's quite a difference. ANd those that score low on WMI on WISCIV and very high on WMI on SBV.
I've ordered one of the executive function for kids books and will report back if there is something noteworthy.
