I think "something else is going on" has to be the answer. I am bothered by claims like "xxx overestimates" a person's abilities. There is NO one test that can tell us a child does not have some given level of ability. I have a child who tested in the mild MR range at age 5 (my son with autism) and that turned out to be a BS diagnosis.
Years earlier, my brother tested below the cutoff for G&T more than once (in lower and middle school) but then made the cut easily later.
After leaving the place where my son got the MR diagnosis (which happened to be UC SF), we were lucky to work with psychologists who had a very different way of interpreting the test results (at least for kids on the autism spectrum). These psychologists (Ph.D level, including some top people who had trained at UCLA) interpreted the IQ test results VERY differently: they would look at the higher scores in some of the areas (matrix reasoning, picture concepts, whatever), and view the HIGHER scores as the more accurate estimate of the child's ability. As my son with autism overcame much of his disability (thanks to intensive ABA), sure enough, those other skills (which had earlier tested low) increased substantially.
In the case of this one child we are discussing on this thread, just the description about "extreme concerns about ADHD" makes me wonder if something else was going on that day and distracted the girl. WHo knows? Do we dare presume (even in our own minds) to claim some arbitrary limit to what this girl can achieve, or claim to know some limit to her potential? I think not. I hope the parents of this high achieving girl do not come to think she is "average" as she certainly is NOT.
