Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Will learning to read and write improve IQ scores?

My child was tested using WPPSI III more than a year ago (at 4 years) and his FSIQ was in the mid 140s. What stood out was that his processing speed was in the 80 percentiles (83 percentile to be exact) while all the other criteria were much higher (in the 99.xxx percentile range). It could have been because he could not read at that time - he says the tester used several flash card like things - I am not sure. He has since picked up reading and writing and his vision has been tested and things are fine with his visual processing according to the pediatrician, his K teacher and his eye doctor. I am wondering if his late reading affected how he responded to some questions in the IQ test. We had the testing done by a psychologist as part of the admissions process in a local private school.
If his ability to read and interpret words will change the test results, then I might try to get his retested this year. A better score might mean that I am able to apply for some programs that have a higher cutoff on IQ scores than his current score. If the score might not change in any significant way due to this factor, then I might drop the idea of retesting this year. Any advise?

If nothing has been done to improve the issue causing the processing score problem then you will only see change in the IQ relative to the fluctuation of testing so young. WPPSI is designed to test children as young as 3 and isn't focused on reading and writing as those are more achievement related and bias against those for whom English is not spoken in the home.

A discrepancy as large as the one you describe between processing and the other scores is an indication of a learning disability. You may not learn more clues as to what that is until your child is further in school. It can take awhile to figure it all out. Children as bright as yours tend to find ways to compensate for those handicaps making it hard to distinguish what is really going on.

If you choose to test again, it might be helpful to work with a Neuropsychologist so that you can get more information about what the "processing issue" is likely related to. If your child is not yet 6, he may not be able to test on all the batteries that would be helpful just yet.

Really?

This is what I have been told by 2 psychologists and a neuropsychiatrist. If you have other information perhaps you will share it.

Maybe, maybe not. "Profile analysis" (i.e. determining diagnoses from an IQ profile or scatter alone) can be inexact and is controversial. I've seen slow processing speed on IQ be an artifact due primarily to factors like perfectionism, age of the tester contributing to immaturity and misunderstanding the need to do that part as fast as possible or unwillingness to do so, or a variety of other non pathological factors. I've also seen it occur when there is a problem such as dysgraphia, dyspraxia, ADD (where the speed may not be truly slow but so many mistakes are made on the types of visual scanning and rote tests that IQ processing speed tests entail that the score comes out low)...

My general approach is to only assume a LD or other problem if issues are seen IRL. Do you notice your dc taking longer to complete tasks that are at the appropriate level of instruction? For instance, my one kiddo with true low processing speed can perform extremely highly at tasks that are well above grade level (they are the appropriate level of instruction for her), but she is slow at it. We've always called her "deep, not fast."

It seems very unprofessional if they told you that. There are obviously many possible causes for a difference in scores.

Cricket2 gave a much more detailed answer, and 20 seconds sooner too.

FWIW my son scored 27th percentile on Processing Speed and 99.9th percentile on Math Fluency. Sometimes he's slow and sometimes he's fast, so I take all this with a grain of salt.

Thanks to all for such detailed answers. My child likes to do things really, really fast - he is crazy about doing things fast and extremely proud of his ability to finish tasks quickly - but when he is faced with an unfamiliar task, he does not know how to proceed and needs to think and come up with a strategy and he slows down remarkably in those situations and he gets very frustrated with himself. He is also a perfectionist and sometimes refuses to do anything that he knows will result in an imperfect outcome. We are working on his perfectionism issues.
I chalked the low processing speed in the results up to immaturity on my child's part. Though I never thought that a processing speed in the 80 percentiles could be a symptom of a LD, it is worth checking out. While writing, he has letter reversals (at age 5) and a horrible handwriting due to fine motor control issues and hates to write and color. He is also diagnosed as color blind.
Now, I will wait until he is a little older and use a neuropsychiatrist administered test as suggested above to see what the outcome is.
Thank you all for your thoughtful responses.

Ditto to what Cricket said


And I have a dysgraphic ds who has a significant dip in Processing Speed on the WISC - and who also has a significant dip in achievement scores marked "fluency" vs others - because they are timed and require handwritten responses. That's the type of analysis that reveals a learning disability (not just looking at IQ scores alone). Neuropsychologists also will typically run additional tests (beyond ability/achievement) to determine if an issue exists when this type of discrepancy occurs - as well as taking a detailed history, interview with parents, etc).

To the OP - the Processing Speed subtests don't require a child to be able to read or to know how to write, but being comfortable with holding a pencil and making marks might make a difference. FSIQ 140+ is a *really* high score - other than DYS and I think Duke (which I don't really know anything about - it's in a different part of the country than where I live) - I don't know of any programs that have admissions bars so high your ds couldn't get in with that FSIQ score. I also don't know if you can calculate it for the WPSSI, but for the WISC you can calculate a GAI which takes out WM and PSI scores, and most of the gifted programs we've encountered will accept GAI in place of FSIQ.

My suggestion is to watch your ds at school - be aware of the things that might have caused a dip in processing speed and *if* you notice other signs of things that might be a challenge (trouble with pencil grip, for instance, or trouble with timed tasks etc) - then seek out a full educational eval to determine if the dip exists and if it's meaningful.

Best wishes,

polarbear

I also was just noticing that the OP is talking about a child with processing speed in the 80th percentile or above not a scaled score in the 80s. Although that is considerably lower than scores in the upper 90s on the other indices, it isn't so much lower that I'd be thinking LD. Many of us with kiddos with concerning discrepancies have kids with differences of 50 percentiles or more.