Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Child's Scores OverTime

I'm just curious whether you've seen significant changes in your child(ren)'s scores over time.

My son is only 4 and I've read that that's "too young" to get an accurate score. We'll probably test again in a few years if it seems like we should.

Age 4 vs age 7.
Chalk and cheese.

Hi lilmisssunshine,

My dd was tested at 4 and 6, once with the SBV and once with the WISC. She scored slightly lower (5 points difference) on the SBV at 4 thn she did on the WISC at 6. Having tested at 4, personally I'd wait until your child was older if you can, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, dd got really tired at 4 and the tester struggled to get answer from her toward the end. She said this was not uncommon and can impact on the result. Secondly schools were reluctant to see the test as valid because of her age. On the otherhand now I have two tests verifying her scores so they're kind of hard to deny!

Thanks! I'm new to all this and, like many others, trying to figure out what it all *mean* so that I can better understand my son's needs. He took the DAS-II and the scores looked like this:

Differential Ability Scales-Second Edition:
Standard Score* Percentile
General Conceptual Ability (GCA) 136 99
Nonverbal Reasoning Cluster 115 84
Verbal Cluster 126 96
Spatial Cluster 146 99.9
*Mean score = 100, SD = 15

I think these scores are pretty solidly in the gifted category, but was concerned about the 20+ difference between the spatial and the other categories. We're a bilingual household and he didn't speak much english until he was more than 2.5. I feel like that could effect the verbal cluster, though his English now is stronger and very good compared to other age-peers.

Right now, it doesn't really matter. He's only 4. We've decided to pull him out of his Montessori school due to "boredom" and the teacher not wanting to change the curriculum because he does fine in class. We're going to homeschool next year (would be his kindergarten year) and I'm pretty laid back about things.

In the future, though, I'd like to see if there are more resources available, such as DYS or other things like that. It seems now that his general score is really being carried by the high spatial score (and it was the highest the psychologist had ever had a child get) and was wondering if there might be a drastic increase or decrease in strengths.

Again, I know that it doesn't really matter in the long run. I'll still be teaching the same boy, but I'm just looking for clues that might help lead us in the right path (since he's anti-learning right now...).

We tested at 3 and 9 months on the SBV as was required for early entry to school. The psychologist said the result was an underestimate because my son didn't quite understand some of the questions and, like nerdnproud said, by the end he didn't want to answer questions without coaxing.

I still remember sitting in the next room and I could just hear the first question: "What is an apple?" and the response: "It's a snack." Fortunately it went much better from then and the underestimate is 147. It qualified him for early entry and all the gifted programs so I don't think there is a need to retest. We know he is amazingly bright and that will guide us from now. Retesting and getting a score of 157 only confirms what we know and offers no new insights. Retesting and getting a score of 127 would confuse things and probably be contrary to what we see from him day to day.

lilmisssunshine, I've seen a significant drop in one of my children's scores (from age 5 to age 7). I will most likely never know for sure exactly *why* the drop, and there are quite a few reasons that might have come into play that I've wondered about, but she's been tested yet again post-7, and the later (relatively lower) numbers are holding up... but at the same time, in her areas of strength, her achievements seem to point to the first, higher ability #s. Toss into the mix severe vision challenges and prone to being easily distracted and... who knows!

polarbear

I'm curious about what you mean by "anti-learning" - do you mean he's not interested in learning to read or skip-count to 100 by 4s etc? Or do you mean he's resisting work at preschool? Or something else?

The reason I ask is that my EG ds is *extremely* visual-spatial. When he was around 4 years old, he didn't appear at all interested in the things that I had previously thought of as the block-steps you follow along as you learn... learning the alphabet, learning to read, etc. Instead he spent a lot of time watching and observing, and building things - out of clay, legos, whatever. It wasn't until he was much older and I asked him specific questions about how he learned etc that he explained to me how he sees information in his head - I won't go into detail here, but my point is - it's possible your ds might *look* like he's anti-learning, when really what's happening is he's learning in a unique way that is different and reflected in his visual-spatial score.

Best wishes,

polarbear

He mostly hates going to preschool, but there are a few things he likes doing there. He hates the repetitive work that the teacher suggests, but is compliant at school (Then poorly behaved at home. There's a big difference between when he does something at school he wanted to do and something that he didn't want to do.).

He does OK when I let him play computer games like Reading Eggs, but he gets frustrated when he doesn't do perfectly (perfectionism).

He's not terribly interested in learning to read or anything else. Rarely wants me to read him a book, even if it's something that interests him. Often resists any of the cute learning activities I see on Pinterest, especially if it's obvious that I'm trying to make him learn something (e.g. There's an idea of parking Hot Wheels cars in parking spaces with sight words. If I set this up for him, DS would give me a look like, "That is the stupidest thing I have ever seen."

The scores indicate that he's visual-spatial, and he has said that he sees movies in his head. It's hard for me to wrap my head around, since I'm a verbal thinker. I've been trying to spark his interest in a variety of things, especially things that are "supposed" to be interesting to v-s learners, but so far, nothing's really stuck. He's not that interested in building things; I tried taking apart an old toaster and it was sorta interesting, but he wanted me to do all the work. I've also tried some physical activities like soccer and karate, but those have just been blah.

Very developmentally normal for kids to be resistant to formal instruction at that age. Kids learn by play when they are young.

Exactly. And testing at that age is not reliable either.