Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Memory disorder diagnosis

Hi all. I just got my psych results back and would greatly appreciate your thoughts.

I went in thinking I had dyscalculia, and I ended up with a amnestic disorder diagnosis. The psychologist says it's mild, but gave me a list of accommodations I think will really help.

My iq came back average. On the achievement tests, my math was exactly 100, but my reading and writing were in the Very Superior range. My academic fluency was above an 18th grade level along with my reading. My writing was not far behind. In the report I was described as gifted in reading and writing.

Have any of you had any experience with amnestic disorders? If so, how have you coped?

Also, even though my iq is average, would I still be classified as gifted by my reading and writing scores?

Thanks so much.

Do you have the score break down on the IQ test? Sometimes, low scores in one area that doesn't have much to do with general intelligence, such as processing speed or working memory, bring down the "full scale" score into the average range. It is unusual (although not impossible) to have achievement scores that are significantly higher than IQ.

If the psychologist's report described you as gifted in reading and writing, it is likely that your verbal IQ, at least, is high.

I don't have much time to go into detail at the moment, but fwiw our youngest dd (8 years old, 2nd grade) has a significant weakness in her associative memory. We didn't recognize it as that until educational testing, which we took her in for because we suspected she had dyslexia - she struggled tremendously to learn to read, and she is extremely challenged with spelling. Different challenge than you've seen in your life, but similar in that her symptoms seemed to fit a common LD but were in fact related to a deficit in memory skills.

She hasn't been through neuropsych testing at this point, and we're just starting down the journey of trying to figure out how to cope with it all. She has an extensive list of accommodation suggestions from the person who did her ability/achievement testing. Did the person who did your testing have any suggestions for coping with the memory issues you have? DD's accommodation suggestions are very similar to common accommodations for dyslexia, but the type of instruction that would benefit dyslexics would not help her, she needs a different type of instruction. Like you, her achievement scores are sky high (but in math) even though her IQ overall isn't as sky high as her achievement.

Re your IQ score, it's really important (if you can) to try to get the subtest scores - an average of "100" could mean all your subtest scores are right around the middle average or.... it might mean you have some very very low and some very very high. This is the case with our dd - the skills that match up with math ability are very very high as are a few others, but the subtest that relies on associative memory is very very low.

polarbear

Hi polarbear. Thanks for taking the time to write all of that.

He suggested a lot of things, like 50% extra time on tests, private testing rooms, a lighter courseload, etc. I think they'll really help.

The subtest scores were all either low average or average. Nothing was even high average.

Thanks.

When you say your "subtest scores" were all average to low average, do you mean the index scores (VCI, PRI, WMI, PSI), or the subscores that made them up, (comprehension, vocabulary, block design, digit span,etc.)?

To get an FSIQ of 101 with a WMI of 89, you'd have to have at least a few subscores that were relative strengths (this doesn't mean that they would have to fall outside the range of average (they might still be within 2/3 of a standard deviation of the mean), but it might help us give you some insight to look at them in more detail.

Hi,

I believe they were index scores, without having them in front of me. But they were all really really average. I think the highest was 102. I don't really know what to make of it.