Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment New here/Ceiling Q's

Okay, that fixes it.

In our report the tester pointed out the difference in processing speed and the other scores and included his reasoning (because at 7 the score is not uncommon) and also that her working memory was very good (which rules out some other issues that they look for). He included her level of interest throughout the test, what really excited her, and when her attention began to flag. And he made a point of explaining her scores by comparing her level to the age of an average child at that level.

He also told us verbally that she did hit the ceiling and that he could do the extended norms (for a fee). We didn't see the need (particularly since we paid for the testing ourselves) at that time.

I point all this out because I've seen posts here where it seems that parents aren't getting that much data from their testers or have the ability to discuss their questions. Obviously we had a great experience, and I hope that level of engagement and information isn't unusual.

Thank you for sharing this link. Some may say it shows the effects of cherry-picking data in order to contrive a desired score. Super-scoring IQ tests in this manner may yield results which do not accurately reflect the intellectual profile of the child, and may be said to be gaming the system.

Ongoing research of "gifted" children yields skewed results when the study subjects may have been identified by artifice.

My DD had a substitution on her WISC and it seemed to make sense to me, although it doesn't really matter. She would have qualified for DYS without the substitution and didn't need the higher score for any reason.

I don't remember the details, but the tester wrote a paragraph explaining the reason for the substitution. Apparently DD correctly completed all of the block design and was able to solve all of them, but went very slowly and carefully. So the report described her score with the time limit and then that she was able to complete it when given more time. She then had a substitution for that part. The resulting score was almost identical to her score on other tests, so it seemed reasonable to me - but, again, it didn't matter that much as we had all of the scores on the report and it was easy to see exactly what had been done.

I did once have a tester who adjusted my daughter's score on a test to help her get a higher score. That really bothered me and I never used the score from that test. My daughter had met the termination criteria for missing questions, but was allowed to keep going and then given points for the additional questions. I was unhappy about that. So I'm sure cherry picking does happen, unfortunately.

I don't know why there was a substitution as I have not yet received the whole report. I do not think the tester cherry picked... My child is already a DYS. We were merely retesting to update scores due to a move and a program requested scores within 2 years.

I had my daughters initial testing done at a Ph.D. Level school psychology program at a university. This university employs several very well known creators of these tests and when I asked about the extended norms the evaluators checked with them and this is what I was told. " Extended norms are only to be used when an examinee receives full credit on every item in a subtest and receives a perfect raw score, otherwise extended norms are not statistically necessary, they are for the students who max out an area of the test, not students who do very very well for their age." The person who answered helped create the norms, so I imagine this answer was accurate. In short they said most of the time extended norms really should not be calculated.

In addition, he did say that the norms had been marketed in a way that the creators had not intended and they would be glad when the WISC 5 came out in the fall and the extended norms were no longer a factor.

Are you sure that's what they said? Mathematically this is quite bizarre.

He said they were initially intended to distinguish among PG (GAI 99.9 percentile before extended norms) children and not moderately gifted individuals. That they were created for research purposes and marketed quite differently. Once you sell your intellectual-property you do not get to determine its use.
I got the impression he was disturbed that they were being used to raise the scores of HG individuals. I do trust the university that did her testing as they were very informed.

I asked my mathy husband your question 22b and i am sure his explanation will be more clear:). Per the evaluator: In order to to initially be included in the extended norming sample you had to have a GAI at the 99.9th percentile and both the PRI and VCI needed to exceed the 98th percentile and you needed to have received the maximum raw score on at least one subtest (all before extended norms). When the norms were published the criteria for the use of extended norms was listed differently. His argument was unless you meet the above criteria you should not use extended norms because you do not meet the criteria of the norming group. I can see how my wording was not clear, sorry for the confusion.