Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment New to all this...question about WISC-IV

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Here's one article that discusses that an experienced tester is important. And not just experienced with testing, but experienced with testing gifted kids.

http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/about_sb5_wisc-iv.htm

One piece of advice I have read here that I think is worth repeating over and over again is that the scores from one test are a reflection of what your child was doing on that one day at that one particular slice in time. There are so many things that could go into test results - maybe your ds was tired, maybe bored, maybe didn't feel well, maybe he didn't like the person who did the testing... who knows. If you haven't seen any signs of struggle or concerns at school, I wouldn't worry any more ever again about that test. If your ds later on, does seem to run into issues that you hadn't anticipated, I'd have him tested again privately. The difference between the typical school eval and private testing is that the psychs who administer private testing will typically ask the question *why* is there scatter in subtest scores and try to come up with an explanation through parent interview, student's history, looking at school work, and possibly adding on a few additional types of tests.

I will also politely disagree with the school psych's note that the discrepancy in his scores didn't make sense for a HG+ child - maybe they don't make sense for *him* (because they aren't reflective of his true abilities for whatever reason), but there are quite a few of us parents here who have HG/EG/PG children with similar scatter in scores and our kids are doing very well in school and achieving big things, even those of our kids who's discrepancies are due to disabilities.

polarbear

As others have said, an experienced tester can make a material difference - did you witness the test? Did your child appear engaged? We were very lucky in that we had our DD tested when she was almost 8 by an extremely experienced and engaging tester.

The unfortunate truth appears to be (from reading many tales of woe here) that many school districts see 'Giftedness' as a PIA and appear to do their level best to discourage it.

I would not be at all surprised if a test administered by an independent and experienced tester yielded a very different result.

Why would such a child necessarily struggle after a grade skip? The IAS puts the bar at 130 in most cases.

Did they give you the scores for the tests within the subtests? I'd want to know what the unusual scatter they mentioned actually looked like and it might give you more insight into whether the VCI and PRI really look like low-ball estimates b/c they were dragged down by some of the tests being much lower than others.

That said, like others, I disagree that the scores you have are indicative of a child who wouldn't be performing as highly as is he. There have been a number of articles posted here over the years that point to the importance of working memory in school achievement. Just a quick google search brought up this summary of a study that found that working memory is more important that overall IQ in school achievement: http://sharpbrains.com/blog/2010/01...r-predictor-of-academic-success-than-iq/

Just as an anecdote, I have one child with DYS level GIA (a combo of VCI and PRI) and VCI that is just shy of DYS levels. B/c her working memory is pretty average and she has ADD, she is a high performer in grade in a high performing school, but she doesn't stand out among other kids in the GT programming as dramatically different the way I might expect someone with her IQ level to.

I've also, over the years, known a couple kids with profiles along the lines of your ds' but with overall lower FSIQ who are very high achieving. These kids had truly average VCI and PRI scores (pretty much the entirety of the indices were right around the 50th percentile), but they had high PSI and/or WMI and they perform dramatically better than I would generally expect given the overall IQ and VCI/PRI scores. While none of them are grade accelerated, they are kids whose achievement scores are pretty consistently advanced on state tests and whose nationally normed tests come in at the mid to upper 90s (percentile) across the board and who are in GT classes. One of these kiddos, whose mom has shared a lot, has had IQ tested more than once with experienced testers and has consistently had pretty average/high average overall scores with the VCI and PRI consistently average.

I say all of that not to say that your ds' scores are absolutely correct or the be all end all of his ability, but b/c it is entirely possible for WMI and PSI to play an important role in school success. Neither is useless or unimportant, they are just a better indicator of skills that support one in success than they are depth. For instance, kids with high VCI/PRI tend, in my experience, to come across as deeper, more abstract, able to make connections that are not readily obvious, etc. Kids with high WMI/PSI tend to be good students who can master the material and perform very highly but perhaps without creating new knowledge so much as mastering the given knowledge. Both pieces would be the ideal situation, but most of us don't get ideal!

Was this note about rushing from the WJ-III Achievement tests or from his WISC comprehension subtest? If it's from the WISC - I'd say you have your answer there - he was rushing and that could be why his score is so much lower for comprehension than the other subtests.

If the 55 you've mentioned in comprehension above and the notes about rushing from the psych are from his *achievement* tests - I'd consider there might be a relative weakness in comprehension and possibly look into it further or at least keep it in mind as he moves up in grade level and the emphasis moves from learning to read to reading to learn (I know your ds already knows how to read - but meant that in relation to the type of work that comes with school assignments). Another thing you might do is look at any results the school has from reading-specific assessments and see if they match or don't match what you're seeing here. I only mention thinking about it because if it's showing up as a relative weakness on *two* different types of tests that lessens the chances the relatively low score is due to rushing through just by chance.

Best wishes,

polarbear

This is just a guess - if it is a relative weakness - I have read that HG+ kids often cruise through the early years of school simply because they can put together so much from context. A test like this doesn't give contextual clues for pulling information together, so that's one possible reason why he may be soaring high in schoolwork but not performing so highly on this one specific task.

polarbear

FWIW, my one kiddo who I mentioned earlier also had a much lower comprehension score on VCI (her split was something like 75th percentile for comp and 99th+ for the other two VCI portions) and she is also highly socially aware with great social skills. Years after the fact, in a discussion with her, she relayed something about that test that led me to believe that she responded in ways that indicated selfishness or social deviance not b/c she didn't know what was correct socially but b/c she didn't understand that she was supposed to answer what one should do rather than what would most benefit her (i.e. stealing would benefit her, but wouldn't be what you should do, but she answered in ways that were solely to her benefit even if they involved theft). I hope that she wouldn't actually put anything of that sort into action!

Like Dottie, I'm not sure that I put as much stock into comprehension as a raw test of giftedness. The gifted development center has the following chart on their webpage as to the correlation of each of the WISC-IV subtests with "g" (i.e. giftedness or raw ability):

Good Measures of g

Arithmetic .768
Vocabulary .751
Information .748
Similarities .733

Fair Measures of g

Matrix Reasoning .687
Block Design .672
Word Reasoning .648
Comprehension .646
Letter-Number Seq. .621
Picture Completion .616
Picture Concepts .582
Symbol Search .568
Digit Span .525


Poor Measure of g

Coding .454

Poorest Measure of g

Cancellation .209

(Keith, Fine, Taub, Reynolds, & Kranzler, 2004)

DD recently did the WISC 4 since we were moving to Toronto and I was worried since it has been a tough year. Her scores were way up there but the tester sat down with me after to discuss.

She said some things, her opinion about DD's future math ability, because "her hands moved slowly". And I just sat there nodding since I just needed the results for Toronto gifted program, and thought that in the sping, at 7 years old, she played tchaikovsky kamarinskaya for a concert people paid to attend. Her teacher, who teaches gifted piano students, wanted to show off DD, whose hands fly over the keys, like none of her other students.

So much for this psychologist, but I got the score done for the cheapest price...

Ren