Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Why do I see my son differently than the tests?

We got my son's CogAT results yesterday and I was surprised at then. He did well, which didn't surprise me, but not in the way I expected. His scores were:
Verbal: 145
Quantitative: 142
Nonverbal: 131
Composite: 145
Ds10 is my math kid - I expected him to rock the nonverbal, not the verbal. He's not a huge reader (at least compared to my others), has a fairly average vocabulary, etc.. I'm shocked he did so much worse on nonverbal.
We always thought he was great on spatial things - he loves building, is good with directions, seems to be able to "see" problems in his mind, etc....But, this isn't the first test where he scored lower on this - I don't remember his scores on the IAAT (Iowa Alg test) but I do recall he scored nearly perfectly on the computational stuff and definitely lower on the figural/spatial stuff. So, two tests, taken over a year apart... this seems to be good evidence. However, I still feel like that is his strength. Am I not understanding the test-or my son? Does this bode poorly for future geometry classes?
I am also concerned because when it's normed locally, he's even lower. He's only in the 91%-ile for nonverbal locally (97th nationally), and it says "local scores compare his age group performance to students in your local area also in grade 5."
He takes 8th grade math (pre-Alg) with 6th graders. So, I am guessing he'd be even lower compared to the kids with whom he is actually taking math. Should I be concerned? Is this a skill that can be developed? I researched a little and it seemed to be lots of paper-folding examples. I can't see this kid sitting down and practicing paper folding. The test says he will have "difficulty reasoning with images," and "difficulty solving problems in creative ways," but he seems very, very creative to me. However, now we have two tests which seem to concur, so I don't want to ignore them. Should I be doing something?
BTW, we haven't done IQ testing (aside from a required KBIT many years ago) and don't plan to, but he scores well on achievement testing (perfect 25 on the EXPLORE math in 4th grade - doesn't that show nonverbal skill?) and he seems at least on par with his PG sibling (the only one we've tested independently, but all seem gifted and were school identified as gifted).
Our school switched to the CogAT last year so none of my other kids have taken it, but their IQ/ability tests (WISC, OLSAT, SATs, etc...) seem to jive with what we think in terms of their strengths, unlike this one.

Math skills are not the same as spatial ability/creative problem solving. Your son may have a fantastic working memory and processing speed, which would be of HUGE importance in traditional math work, but have no effect on his spatial abilities or creative problem solving.

The WISC or other 1 on 1 comprehensive IQ test would lay out better his strengths/weaknesses. The CogAT is a very short group administered test.

Just some thoughts from my recent experience with a similar situation- the huge gap between verbal and non-verbal may indicate a learning disability. I had a similar experience with my son taking the WISC and expected his verbal to be way lower than his non-verbal, but ended up like your son. My son too is a math guy. Looking over the subtests, the tester thought that my son has stealth dyslexia and we are in the process of getting auditory and vision exams to determine if he has auditory processing and vision processing problems which would be the reason for the dyslexia. Our tester said that block design was difficult for my son because he likely couldn't see or process things well enough to complete the tasks correctly.

We were completely blown away by this news and never ever would have said this about our son, btw. But now reading about stealth dyslexia, it totally fits.

Have you had a chance to look at the exact type of questions that were used for each subtest? I am not terribly familiar with the CogAT because only one of my kids has taken it once... and it was through the school district so they didn't share a ton of info on it. I found that with my kids' WISC-etc tests there were often score variations that I didn't understand just on the surface based on what I knew of my kids strengths and weaknesses, but when you dug into the details of what each subtest asked, how it was administered (oral vs reading) or how replies were made (circle, writing, oral response etc) the variations actually made sense in the context of the individual child.

Best wishes,

polarbear

From what the district has told me (not a lot), when you are out at the edge of the bell curve, the difference between a 135 and a 145 or 150 can be a single question on the CogAT. It could just be a typo/brain fart. I wouldn't sweat it.

This is so interesting to me! Because my son also could not do the block design! I watched the testing and he kept inverting the designs and just could not do it (and yet still scored 125). He even asked to look at it from a different angle (which they wouldn't let him do). They had to stop the test and give him a substitute test. When I watched his attempting the block design test that's when I got all worked up over a visual processing problem or dyslexia or something along those lines... The psych (who was quite frankly a moron) said "oh it's just that he's too rigid in this thinking." . But I did take him to for a developmental vision eval anyway and found that he does have convergence issues (basically intermittently crossing eyes). He's getting VT and now I am looking into dyslexia b/c he seems to have many of the signs! I was always convinced that the block design test was indicative of either some sort of dyslexia or visual processing issue - how nice that your doc actually said/recognized that! Our psych basically treated me like I was a wacko!

I actually did think he was great at creative problem solving and spatial things (like describing three dimensional objects) but perhaps I'm not understanding the type of specific skills needed on this test.

This was fascinating-I had never heard of it before, but looked it up after you mentioned it. In general, it doesn't sound like ds, who easily writes (both the actual handwriting and the content) but it did remind me of my older ds, who is diagnosed with expressive language disorder (formerly dx'd as verbal apraxia). I think that one benefit to full testing is getting a more comprehensive picture, especially if your kid is even a tiny bit 2E. That's why we got our oldest tested and it was really helpful. I hope getting the diagnosis for your son helps!

Your question led to a really interesting discussion (this is why I love reading things on this board!). I talked to my son, and asked what he thought - I told him he did well, but I was curious what he thought of the types of questions. I had looked up samples, but I saw questions of the type I had seen him do on some gifted math online programs very successfully. He said, "well, when I get those types of problems, I always solve them with scrap paper- either by folding it or drawing images. When I build things, I try to draw 3-dimensional models first" (and I've seen these, which is another reason I thought he was very "spatial"). Turns out, they weren't allowed any scrap paper at all, and he said he is so used to solving these questions a certain way that he had trouble thinking of a different way.
Since my main concern was whether this boded poorly for Geometry, I feel a lot better. Even if he isn't naturally good at this (and I still somewhat think he is), if he can solve problems like this with pencil and paper, I'm happy.
Thanks for your note- I think it prompted me to just ask him directly and that turned out to be very informative!