So I hear a lot about how gifted kids almost always have lower processing and working memory scores. To me, this begs the question: so, then, who scores HIGHly on these measures, and why? I assume that there are kids out there getting 120-140+ on these subtests, right?
I was, for instance, wondering if higher scores on these measures tend to be more typical of bright high achievers with lower, more even test profiles. Could it be? Perhaps the high processing speed/high memory kids are the "not quite gifted" kids who miss the program cutoff but are very strong in school--conventional high achievers?
My kids scored very high and quite balanced on IQ testing. They are definitely not "just" conventional high achievers, but they do find school type stuff very easy and fly through it. When one was assessed for reading comprehension in K, the reading specialist was a little freaked out that he could answer the questions in the exact language from the passage he'd read once or paraphrase to show he understood it. Multiplication tables were learned in about 5 minutes. Things that depend a great deal on memory like languages, vocabulary, spelling, arithmetic are all really easy for them.
I don't think the tree/leaf/forest concept works for these kids. It's not that they have good memory and therefore necessarily have poor creativity or abstraction. Some kids really are just good at creativity, abstraction, and detail. They do big picture well and small picture well. They don't only know arithmetic because math facts are easy, rather because that took no effort, they can move on to learning more abstract concepts really early. And since those are easy and they arej really fast, then they learn harder stuff faster too . . . . . .
I'm sure that kids come in all flavors of profiles on IQ testing. There are lots of scores posted here with isolated highs in one subtest, with high GAI but lower PSI/WMI, and with one lower score and three higher ones, etc. There are kids with high scores across the board as well.
