Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Anyone want to school me on the SB-V?

My DS is taking it next week. He has already had the WPPSI, I know the SB-V is longer than that. Is the scoring similar to the WPPSI? (i.e. ceilings, are there extended norms, etc?)

Also, he is more of a verbal kid, his gift is definitely reading, and I've read that it's really good for math kids, so a tiny part of me is wondering if this is a waste of time. LOL!


We are taking it on the long shot that he will get a 145+ to get into a possible school. I'm pretty sure he won't score that high over all, just going by his WPPSI scores, but I am hoping he will get a 145 on either section for DYS qualification. (He came really close on the WPPSI with a 147 Verbal IQ, so I think he has a shot.)

If anyone is familiar with this test, or has had a child take it, can you offer any insight? I went into the WPPSI completely ignorant of IQ tests, so when the psych read me the scores, I was a little lost. I'm just trying to become a little more familiar with the SB-V. Thanks!

My son took the SBV when he was 5y3m last fall. Unfortunately, I can't compare it for you to the WPPSI because I don't have any experience with that. I know that there are extended norms; I am currently waiting for Aimee Yermish to look at my son's raw scores and calculate his extended IQ because he ceilinged in four of the subtests (out of 10 total)... I don't know if it will modify his score much or not.

I have also heard that the SBV favors mathy kids, which my son deinitely is. That said, his score for the nonverbal was actually several point lower than his verbal. His FSIQ was the highest.

FWIW, my son really enjoyed taking the test. He wanted to keep going back to the "puzzle doctor". Good luck on the score. I wish we had access to a school where you need a 145 to get in!!

(From my phone) Ditto on hearing about a "mathy" skew, but our evenly developing DS5 did fine overall. The test has plenty of headroom, no worries there. There are the equivalent to extended norms, can't recall the name right now, but the documentation IIRC says they're only for people above 160 and they seem to be of little value. They won't allow an alternate calculation to boost one over a 145 threshold (in this complete layperson's belief). DS5 hated the test, as he seems to hate all tests. A benefit on the SB5 is the routing questions, used to get to a good starting place for the individual and cut down on test time/stress, although if your kid tests well it will still take significant time. SB5 also has looser time restrictions than WISC. Good luck.

ETA: According to Deborah Ruf here, the Extended IQ (EXIQ) scoring is available for those with a full scale IQ (FSIQ) above 150. So according to that, EXIQ scoring won't get one over a FSIQ 145 hump based on reaching ceilings on subtests.

I have question about the time for SB-V. My ds9 took much longer then they thought it would take him to do the test. They told me to plan for two hours, but it took over three hours. Of course they did not tell me if it is good or bad. I have to wait until I meet with them in two weeks. But my ds said that when he got stuck in math, the tester said, that he should not worry, as it is high school math. So, what I found interesting is that they had expecations for time, so I did not know that is has loose time restriction. Any thoughts on this? Is there an average time that the tester used for her expecations?

Hmmm. My son took the SB5 in feb at 5.9 with a fsiq 132, which was too low for the program I wanted him in. I had him re-tested (new tester) in April with the WISC and he got a fsiq of 155. A friend of mine whose son is HG/PG had a similar experience on the SB5 using the same tester we used. So, I am not sure if I am doubting the SB5 or our first tester ...so I am also not sure if this post is any help at all to you, but here it is. My son is pretty evenly developed verbal & non-verbal.

I don't think the SB-V is timed at all; at least when my son took it, he wasn't timed. He was tested using the SB-V at age 5 and then recently took the WISC-IV at age 7 (almost 8). I'm not sure if this is due to test differences, time constraint differences, or age, but my ds scored higher on the SB-V than the WISC-IV. I'm not sure how the scores compare.

It is timed, just very loosely. Most subtests IIRC have a limit of many minutes per question. Also, there are fewer speed portions (there might actually be none, and I might just be remembering something from the WJ achievement test).

Thanks everyone! This is all very helpful. I was a little nervous about it, he's 4.5, but hopefully he has fun doing the "puzzle work," like he did with the WPPSI.

One other thing I forgot to mention is that apparently some research has shown that drawing conclusions from subtests on the SB5 can be dicey, because even the mathy subtests tend to have more of a verbal slant than on other IQ tests. Hopefully that will give your verbal kid a boost! Good luck!

Good to know! Thank you.