Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Living with kids with low Working Memory

My child got a 1% (62) on the Working Memory Index of WISC-IV. She got got a 99.5% (139) on PRI. That pretty much spans the whole scale. She has an executive function disorder. It is not ADD with inattentiveness although it presents that way to some degree. Her language organization is extremely poor and she has word retrieval issues.

http://speech-language-pathology-audiology.advanceweb.com/Article/Executive-Dysfunction.aspx

One thing that did come up in the testing is that my daughter performs better on the higher order memory tests than on the lower order tests (simple recall). The more difficult the task, the more she seems to concentrate and pay attention. The little things in life go right by her as if they aren't even there, but something interesting -- snags her and she pays more attention and carries through more frequently. I would suspect this is the case with most very bright kids.

This discussion intrigues me. I'm still learning, having only had DD8 tested in May. She had a GAI calculated due to low WMI and PSI, specifically Digit Span and Coding, both 63%. A second psychologist gave me reason to believe WMI and PSI might even be lower.

All that to say, when I read these anecdotes I keep thinking of DD. I have lost count how many times we have shaken our heads, scratched our heads, and raised our voices at her because of her seeming inability to follow basic directions for getting to bed, getting ready for school, picking things up, etc. I confess we have both doubted her giftedness on account of this, asking ourselves, "How can this be gifted?"

Mixed into that is of course her stubborness but I cannot believe DD would purposely flake out and do this intentionally so often, given how much conflict and stress it brings to daily routines.

On the other hand, 63% is still above average, so how can I blame WMI/PSI ? Is it because the high scores elsewhere throw things out of whack?

Exactly! When it's above 50% most folks won't call it a Learning Disability, but it is still a key issue - we call it a Bottleneck around here. A psychologist described it as 'one leg shorter than the other' because there is nothing wrong with having short legs or 2 long legs but having one short and one long would really be difficult to walk around with if no accomidations were made.

chills, right?
Me too,
Grinity

Wow! That illustration was exactly what I needed to illuminate it.

It really does give me chills. Have I really been scolding and resenting what I perceive to be inordinate stubbornness or simple laziness in a child who may in fact be suffering from a real disability? Ouch.

What to do? I take it there is not a go-to handbook for this either.

We asks ourselves this same question. Some days, we just can't help the scolding. You get soooo frustrated and nothing seems to help, then you begin to think that maybe she IS doing it all on purpose. Later, the guilt sets in and we convince ourselves that we are expecting things from her that she is incapable of doing on her own (thus far). DD's WM was in the 34%-ile, most probably a reflection of her ADHD. Even seeing it on paper and hearing it from the psychologist, we STILL doubt her giftedness on a daily basis. How can a kid that smart have such a hard time with the smallest details of life??

My wife wonders the same thing about me on a daily basis.

You might try "Smart but Scattered" and/or "Late, Lost, and Unprepared". Both are about helping to build executive function.

Executive dysfunction is a disability. It's just not always viewed in that way, although the perception is changing with more concentration on EF difficulties in kids diagnosed, perhaps misdiagnosed, with ADD. Working memory is a big red flag for executive dysfunction. The problems become more pronounced as kids move through school with more demands placed on them. My child scored a 62 (1%) on the WMI of WISC-IV. In subsequent testing, she performed markedly better in higher order memory skills than the lower order skills, part of that is likely due to the fact that she pays more attention when she perceives the task to be more difficult. (Unintentionally double-posted) That's true in every day life activities where the more assumed activities we do don't get the same concentration as the more difficult and/or entertaining activities. When your working memory is weak to begin with, less concentration can exponentiate the problem rather quickly. Of course, when these kids become overwhelmed by their demands everything falls apart.

I love love love the analogy of having one short and one long leg. I'm going to use that.

My working memory is obviously substantially different from my husband. He has an amazing WM, whereas mine is clearly limited. A bottle neck is a good description of how I feel with some tasks.

When I think about WM I see his ability to juggle hundreds of little balls in the air, draw conclusions and make unusually accurate predictions with ease. I, on the other hand, can only juggle maybe a few or a dozen new balls at a time, depending on how new they are to me. Once I have those patterns learned I can use the information very well and even add a few more balls to my array- until then, my vision is too narrow. While I know there are balls falling, I cannot keep them in my vision. This can be extremely frustrating when I am in new environments. Later, I can never figure out why I found things even remotely difficult.

I have been thinking a lot about this b/c my younger 2 have such very different memories.

DS#2 (12) language/reading/creativity 97th %ile, WMI 34th plus a visual and an auditory processing disorder. He never could remember if he had gotten a ride to school that morning or had ridden the bus.
But he'll remember everything he ever actually heard, he amazes the rest of the family, and his Sunday School, all the time.

DD(8) thinking=99th, working memory=6th. She's completely organized and remembers what her "special" class is that day, where she goes after school. But she can't remember all of the smoke that covered our area from the Arizona fires in June. DS#2 is very distressed with her not reading chapter books - she complains they are "boring." This sounds like trouble concentrating to me.

What to do? I remember my mom always focusing on explaining my brother's dyslexia - till it drove me crazy. I finally fussed back, "It's not enough to *understand* it, you need to put your energy into compensating!"

DS#2, I tell DD, has proven that my dogging him has worked. From 2nd grade, we have told him he needs to work harder, to try harder, to put more effort into paying attention and using his planner. I am *delighted* with how he's doing, better than DS#1 was at his age. My mom used to say, "That which disables, enables also. That which enables, disables also."

However, neither of my younger 2 do all that well on this computerized assessment their schools do three times a year. I mean not 95th percentile - more like 87th.