Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment OLSAT Question (just out of curiosity)

So there is big gap between my son's verbal score on the olsat and the non-verbal, with the non-verbal being MUCH higher. Not really an issue since he will get getting the WISC again anyway in Septemeber (and I already know a lot about his issues due to when he took the WISC at 6 years old). But, this strikes me as quite odd because I expected the opposite result, i.e., much higher verbal score... Does anyone know what each measures? and is the gap just further indication of a learning disability?

Hmmm I may have just found a clue:

"My child’s verbal score was much lower than the non-verbal score on the OLSAT.
One key factor to remember about the OLSAT is that instructions for questions can be given once and only once. If a child happened not to be listening when the question was given or was distracted for even a part of it, the tester would not repeat the question. If the child specifically asked for a question to be repeated, the tester still would not be allowed to repeat the question. This gives the child a slim chance of answering an item correctly, given that he/she has not heard all or even part of the question. Additionally, the rule of giving the questions only once affects the verbal portion more significantly than the non-verbal portion of the OLSAT. On non-verbal subtests, the layout of the questions does not change, and the task does not change from item to item. For example, once a child knows what to do with a picture analogy item, he/she knows what to do for all picture analogy items after that. For the verbal subtests, however, each question is novel and specific to the images presented. Therefore, the child must be paying complete attention to each word that is uttered for every single verbal item in order to have a chance at answering correctly."

My DS can not just be told something once and rememeber it long enough to maipulate it to solve a problem - he needs to be able to go back and a few times to the info... Now I totally see why this would happen

I don't know what the OLSAT measures, but DD was given the OLSAT at one of the local private schools. I had never heard of it and so got her a practice booklet from Bright Kids NYC just so she would be familiar with the type of questions they were asking. It was a little hard to find out more about the test because apparently it is not as widely given as some of the others and IIRC also because the test makers don't put out official practice tests??? Not sure about that, but it wasn't as easy to find as other test prep stuff. However, having myself been disadvantaged by not knowing the type of question that was going to be asked on a particular test (in my case, the logic part of the GREs), I believe it is appropriate to at least be able to see the format of the questions and to understand the type of answer the test is 'looking for'--something that has been discussed at length elsewhere on this board. She went through one practice test once and we went over the answers and discussed for the ones she missed what they were probably looking for and that was it. But the questions were very different from anything I (or she) had seen--I guess one way to describe them is kind of geometric analogies or progressions, where a shape changes in the first three parts of a progression and then you are to project the shape change that would occur in the fourth part of the progression. So if you hadn't seen them before I think it might be very confusing. At any rate, she didn't miss a single question on the actual test, but didn't get into the school anyway, possibly because I told the admissions person about DD practicing once beforehand. So probably there are people on this board who are going to jump all over me (to put it politely) for having gotten the practice test, but I strongly believe that a test that relies on the student's unfamiliarity with the questions to create a bell curve is not testing the student's ability to reason and is also particularly unfair to kids who tend to 'overthink' the test. Whatever--just our personal experience. Also of course doing the practice test would ensure that your kid was familiar with the instructions.

Thanks DBat!

I gave my son practice questions as well for the OLSAT and NNAT for the same reasons. I didn't drill him but just wanted him to see what the questions would be like.

My ds7.5 took the OLSAT as part of the g/t test when he was 4 and we were living in NYC. He didn't qualify for the g/t program then. We had the same issues - big discrepancy with verbal/non-verbal scores and between OLSAT and Bracken Readiness test. Well, a year later, we had moved to MA and I was told he was eg/pg by a private gifted school. So much for the OLSAT, I say.

So what happened? My son had vision therapy between 4-6.5 years old and it took about 6/8 months before we had some dramatic results from it. No accommodation or allowance was made for my son's visual or attentional deficits when he took the OLSAT.

My son just took the WJ-III again last week. I'm now waiting for the results.

Thanks cdfox!