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

Oh yikes, I read the OP quickly and was thinking "80"s as the actual PSI, not 80th percentile. 80th percentile I most likely wouldn't even blink over - the reason for that amount of dip might be as simple as a 4 year old who's poking along and doesn't understand that they are being timed. Sooo... if that's what happened, I think chances are that you *might* see an increase in processing speed when he's tested when he's older and "gets it" that for that specific set of subtests you need to make your marks quickly and move along. OTOH, I'd beware that there's always a chance with the next round of testing that you'll see another part of the scores actually go down - that's happened with one of my dds (across the board), and for my 2e ds, his PRI vs VIQ scores have been split each time he was tested, but in opposite directions both times. Sooo... just keep in mind, any one test is a snapshot taken on one day - there's always the chance that you don't capture the full picture on any one test.

Best wishes,

polarbear

I missed percentile too! Different ballgame.

It would be much more helpful if you had information to share rather than attacking the professionalism of those with more training than you without backing it up. I enjoy the discussion much more when people are contributing rather than being catty. Perhaps that was not your intent?

Agreed. I was also told the same thing about my son, who has a nearly 60 point discrepancy between his processing speed PSI and the other three. Being told this was what encouraged us to figure out what else was going on and not dismiss it. Oherwise, we were told "oh thwt is just perfectionism" or "all kids have strengths and weaknesses". Two years later, we finally landed on DCD with dysgraphia, which all now makes PERFECT sense. We wouldn't have gotten there without a push that something wasn't quite right.

That said, 80th-ish percentile is not a lot of a discrepancy, I also missed it too. You want to look for more than one standard deviation (some psychs say two, depending on how high then IQ is) as a possible indication, not as a hard and fast rule.

So as not to ignore the OP (sorry, we tend to get off topic here at times!), I would generally say that learning to read would not improve IQ scores. Improved motor efficiency, especially in the area of small motor skills, might improve processing speed scores, though.

Back to the OT discussion...

This article is one that argues against profile analysis: http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/siegle/Publications/PsychInSchoolBestPractices.pdf
Around the bottom of the fourth page, they begin that discussion.

The WISC technical report #3, on the other hand () essentially seems to support profile analysis by giving the typical scoring patterns for children with various disabilities. I do wish that they had included 2e kids in this chart, too, though and the typical gifted scores they showed seemed awfully low to me in areas like VCI and PRI.

A couple articles discussing slower processing in gifted children (and, again, I really don't think that the OP's child qualifies as having slower processing here):

http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10447.aspx
http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/About_GDC/whoaregiftd.htm

22b I think you should also keep in mind that posters talking about what they have been told are reporting conversations in direct relationship to their own child. Professionals will often speak in general terms "patterns like this can mean..." But they are there to talk to this set of parents about this particular child and they presumably saw something themselves or were asked (or told) something by the parent that lead them down that conversational path. I am sure their are a few less good psychologists around somewhere making diagnosis on profile analysis with no prompting from child or parent - but I would expect parents in that scenario generally end up on forums asking if something is REALLY wrong with their kid that's having no problems, not feeling trusting and like maybe someone finally understood their kid....

If these "professionals" really said what you claim, then they would benefit from reading the following.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors
Or perhaps you misunderstood what they said.

22B I am not exactly sure why you have staked claim on this issue so vehemently. I don't think any of us are saying that you can diagnose a learning disability from the WISC. Our Ed psych and neuropsych both said it was an indication that we should do more testing and looking to confirm or deny a learning disability. Why else would you test, then disregard the information that comes out of the test? It obviously isn't the complete profile- there are many problems you cannot even get a hint from on the WISC. But there is nothing unprofessional about saying "This is an unusual profile, we should look into it." In fact, that is exactly what many of us are paying for.

But that is what HappilyMom said.


There all kinds of innocent explanations for a discrepancy, especially one that's only about 1 SD as in the OP's case. There have been plenty of threads in this forum with much bigger gaps than that, and the consensus seems to be that it's usually no big deal.

"...is an indication..." does not equal a diagnosis, any more than "limping is an indication of a leg injury" tells you that there definitely is a leg injury or what kind, it's just an indication of a possible problem that needs investigation, with a limp you might start by checking if the person just stubbed their toe, with an uneven iq profile you might start with "does this kid have any real world problems?". And as I said in my last post, these conversations between parents and a psychologist are held about a particular child, for a particular reason, so they may already know about the real world problems and therefore not include "possible" in front of "indication of".