Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Retaking WPPSI III

I would like to comment from personal experience about the Block Design and math ability correlation.

Since I am clearly deficient in Block Design and also know what my weaknesses in school and life are, I believe that a weakness in Block Design would first and most acutely be manifested in tasks like writing a paper or doing an independent project rather than in math class since it is a somewhat overwhelming undertaking requiring breaking a task into component pieces and organization. Also subjects like history and literature (especially the more difficult books) which are broad and require synthesizing information in order to make sense, appreciate, and enjoy would be effected.

Math in earlier grades is more reliant on abstract reasoning and "Matrix Reasoning" which is figuring out and completing visual patterns would correlate far more with math performance than Block Design. Only in higher math like Calculus and beyond would a deficit in Block Design ability be an insurmountable detriment. Block Design assesses simultaneous processing rather than sequential processing.