Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Got WISC-IV scores today

I think the psychologist did a good job explaining the results, but my knowledge of these things is zilch. If you have any insights, I would love to hear them! (Also have WJ scores if that would be helpful.)

CVI 152
Similarities 19 (very superior)
Vocab 21 (very sup.)
Comprehension 16 (sup.)

PRI 153
Block design 16 (sup.)
Pic Concepts 17 (very sup.)
Matrix reasoning 23 (very sup.)

WMI 141
Digit span 16 (sup.)
Letter-# Sequence 18 (very sup.)

PSI 115
coding 12 (high avg)
symbol search 13 (above avg)

FSIQ 152

GAI 165

This was for my son who was 6 yrs 1 month and had a positive, cooperative attitude toward the testing.

One question I realize that I forgot to ask-----Is the FSIQ or the GAI score the one that is generally considered the "IQ score"?

Any insights or trends of note?

Wow - the tester used entended scoring right off the bat! I'm impressed - Dottie, is this a first for Gifted Issues Discussion Forum?

((wink))
Grinity

Dottie, we are definitely going to be applying for DYS. That's actually the main reason why we did the testing. Now that we have the scores, I need to quit procrastinating and get that monstrous application filled out. His WJ scores were pretty consistent with the IQ test--between 99.6 - 99.9 percentile.

Grinity, we did have a really great tester. We saw Dr. Amend. I think I saw on a previous post that you consulted him as well. It's such a blessing to be so close to someone that knowledgeable.

One issue he brought up was the processing speed being slower may translate into ds having frustrations with his ability to express himself (e.g., fine motor skills, writing---writing was also his lowest WJ score). We've definitely seen that played out in real life.

Maybe this would be a better ? for a new thread, but if anyone has advice about the writing frustration. We are homeschooling. Would it make sense to 1)teach him keyboarding or 2)wait until his fine motor skills to catch up and do more oral exercises? (I'm a little concerned that he won't go back to working on his handwriting if keyboarding becomes easier, but it might save some frustration.)

I would bet that the lower processing speed is just due to being careful. Congrats on the great results! The DYS application doesn't take very long at all in my opinion, especially if you don't have to do a portfolio.

Regarding the keyboarding, I would let him go ahead and get into it now. I would still do regular writing practice so he develops those physical skills, and oral lessons too if you like, but I think asynchronous development and keyboarding might be a match made in heaven, perhaps more so for a perfectionist. By the time your son's ready for high school or college classes, he will probably be typing at a pretty fast clip.

Yes! You are blessed indeed.

As for keyboarding. I would take a few stabs at it without much expectation at age 6. On one hand you don't want him to learn 'bad habits' if he picks it up on his own. On the other hand, I don't know if even PG 6 year olds can learn to type - with my son we had a few big pushes around age 8, but the results weren't noticable until age 9. If frustration is an issue, one needs to walk a very tight line, but in a way, it can be a very useful thing to have an example of something that needs to be learned by sheer 'hours in equals results over time' - like the bamboo plant!

We did 15 minutes a day for 3 weeks and left it alone for several months.

I would also recommend to work on handwriting with the 'Handwriting without tears' materials, maybe 5 minutes a day for 3 weeks every few months. I love drawing the little smile face under the prettiest letter, and I love their special lined paper. Even MY handwriting improved with that special paper! I did it with my son, and he got to put the smile faces under my prettiest letters. I figured that way he could develop some recognition of the goal, but he loved that it was a mutual project.

My DS was one of those ones that just had to 'be older' before the handwritting 'kicked in' even though he was keyboarding during school - in 7th grade, age 11. Out of the blue! I guess hormones are good for something.

I'm curious about what guidance you got for parenting this Intense boy. Are you going to kick the academics up a notch? My favorite book for parenting these 'easy to frustrate' kids is Lisa Bravo's "Transforming the Difficult Child Workbook."

Yippee!
Grinity

DS5 is picking up typing pretty quickly. That might be unusual. His writing is well-formed but on the slow side.

I appreciate everyone's feedback. It's very helpful to hear your thoughts on typing/writing. I think we'll try keyboarding this summer as a fun thing. If it's not working as I hope, then it can quietly slip from the school schedule in the fall.

I'm not sure how to multi-quote in a reply, but I wanted to answer a couple of questions:
@LittleCherub, you were absolutely right about the fluency/being timed issue. His lowest scores on all 3 areas of the WJ were the fluency portions.

@Grinity, I will definitely be looking up Lisa Bravo's book. Thank you for mentioning it. Dr. Amend mentioned a book called Children: The Challenge by R. Dreikurs for tips on dealing with perfectionism. Overall, ds does pretty well as long as he's getting adequate intellectual stimulation. The biggest issue we have is rigidity in his thinking and an unusually high need for structure. Dr. Amend recommended teaching ds to think of the best, worst, and more likely outcomes of a given issue/problem and told us about some specific games to help with learning the skill of flexible thinking.

I have another IQ question. I have read (I think it's Deborah Ruf's book that I'm remembering) about so many children with IQ's in the 180's-200 range. In comparison, 165 doesn't seem *that* extreme, but I'm realizing that it is a pretty unusual #. When I see these huge IQ #'s, are those coming from a different IQ test or are those children just scoring incredibly high?

Thanks Dottie - That was really clear and well said! Brava!

Maybe Mark could use this post as the beginning of a 'sticky' on PCI/WMI questions?

Smiles,
Grinity

A GAI of 165 is different from older IQ scores in a few ways. For one, it is indeed based on different scoring norms; though extended scoring can boost a number on the SB5 or WISC-IV a bit, whether FSIQ or GAI, a score of 165 today is much more rare than a 165 on older tests, particularly the SB-LM. It's also measuring different things, or at least in different combination. There are tables of rough estimates of giftedness levels based on scores obtained from either the "old way" or the "new way", and I'm positive that an IQ score or GAI of 165 falls comfortably within at the very least "extremely gifted" territory today.

That's great. I wasn't as 'aggressive' in insisting on flexible thinking as I might have been. I think it's great that you are addressing this. I eventually had to read a book about brain injury patients to DS to 'prove' that even though he is inflexible NOW, that we can practice together so he can become more flexible. Of course that is before I read the Bravo book and figured out positive ways to be just as proactive. Now I praise every nano-moment that showed anything like flexibility and slowly but surely there is improvement. But it's slow.


History time: Back around the time WISC 3 was published, the IQ industry decided that 'modern IQ tests' would go to about 145 - or 160 if one was very very amazingly well rounded (i.e. WMI and PSI) and that was all. I can understand this because how is one going to find enough PGlets to properly norm a test that truly differentiates IQ over 145 - where is the profit incentive in that?

Then there was the backlash and some testers refused to give up the outdated SB-LM. The scores you see in Ruf's book are old SB-LM scores. I have noticed that these scores really helped some families 'understand' that their child wasn't fitting in at the gifted program or the gifted school not because of some character defect of the child, but because of LOG.

read:
http://www.dirhody.com/discanner/dontthrow.html

Then a few years ago the Extended scoring was worked out, and now we again have numbers over 145 that can be trusted. So whenever you look at a book with IQ scores, check the publishing dates! We used to have 'new coke' and 'old coke' - but as more and more psychologist start using Extended norm scoring, we'll have 'new-new coke' as well.

What a mess!
(Can anyone help fill in the years or details? - I might have gotten the overall picture right but missed a few important details - it happens!)

You might also want to read every article on this page, not that you know how to interpret IQ scores historically:
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/highly_gifted.htm

Love and More Love,
Grinity