Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment WISC-IV question

And one more thing to keep in mind about re-testing: re-testing within two years of the last test is generally considered invalid, so if you re-test six months from now, you won't be able to re-test again for another two years, which is 2.5 years from now, which may or may not affect the next opening for gifted programming.

Odds of his score changing largely depend on the validity of the original test. If the low score is real (for that task), then it won't change much, and, honestly, you have just as much of a chance of some of the higher scores dropping slightly, offsetting any gains. If the original subtest was not valid, then it might change, but it doesn't appear that the examiner gave any indication that it might be invalid. Index scores are more stable than subtest scores, in general.

2 years? I thought it was just 1 year, or is that 1 year restriction only for the WPPSI?

Does the child have to write the letter (use handwriting?), or do they tell the tester what the letter is verbally? If they are having to write, that might make sense that the subtest score would be relatively lower for a child who is dysgraphic.

polarbear

Whether or not it's dysgraphia, I think it is important to understand why the PSI score was so low relative to the other scores. Same with the WM scores, but definitely with the PSI.



Honestly, I'd want to do further testing not for the higher score, but to understand the scores you have. I'm not sure you need to *retest* but might instead need to add in a few additional types of tests to help understand why his PSI scores were so low. They aren't just relatively low, 9th percentile is truly a low score. It's possible it was nothing - maybe he didn't attend to the task or whatever - but you need to know if it *is* something that is impacting the scores because chances are - if it is - it is also going to eventually impact him academically if it's not understood and either remediated or accommodated/etc.


What did the report say about the low working memory and processing speed?

Best wishes,

polarbear

Thanks for all of the replies. I was a bit swamped today so I'm just getting a chance to go through them more thoroughly. This turned out to be digging deeper than I had originally intended but it is hugely appreciated to be able to tap into the pool of knowledge.

Irena - I can only imagine what my kids would say with a picture of an iron - although there might be some hope since we've started using it for those melting beads crafts They do know how to use a rotary phone thanks to a recent trip to a museum.

Interesting. In his case the lowest of the VCI's subtests was 95th%tile so out of the 6 subtests in VCI/PRI it really stands out as the only one below 95 (and at 50 it really stands out).

Concrete and conventional would not be two words I would use to describe him Definitely not one to go along and play the game (or if he appears to be it usually turns out that he is playing his own parallel game for his own benefit - it just happens to be similar enough that you don't notice until he veers off).

Good point about the chances of the high ones dropping. It is hard to say how valid the testing was. DS was not cooperative for a lot of it, bounced all over the place, and was a bit extra crazy for the second session (I have no idea what tests or subtests that would have corresponded to though). Then again at the time that was the reason we were there - that was how he often behaved at school (this year has been better). TBH I was shocked he scored well at all - I figured they would tell us we were crazy for asking them to test for giftedness along with the ADHD that the school told us to test for.

I don't know that we really know this but the report basically said he likely has a processing speed LD and working memory LD and recommended a lot of accommodations along those lines that he now has in his IEP. She did do the WRAML-2 test to try to get more information on memory functioning but the scores were all over the place and I don't think it really helped clear anything up. We also did Conner's to rule out ADHD. What other tests should I ask for?

It already impacts him academically. School was pretty much a disaster until we got the IEP half way through grade 1. According to his teacher this year (grade 2) he's been catching up and she no longer uses any of the accommodations and he is "at or above grade level". Of course given his IQ a B should probably not be considered his level but that is a whole other story. Considering a year and a half ago we were talking about the possibility that he might never write though it is huge progress that he is blending in now in the middle of the pack on writing assignments.

At the time of the test it was recommended to do more testing in 1-2 years which is anytime from now until the end of the year. We recently exchanged quite a few emails about his marks and behavior and she recommended to keep in touch and wait for another year unless something comes up. The argument being that the school is already doing everything on the LD side of things (or they should if we push them to follow their IEP again) and unless he were to get over 99.6% it doesn't change things on the gifted side which she said was a slim to none chance. We can use his original test to enter the grade 5 gifted program so we don't need to test again for that purpose.

The report was 14 pages long and had lots of info about accommodating the processing speed and working memory. There was nothing about remediating and a year and a half ago I didn't come up with much via google. We did try c8sciences for a while but DS quickly grew to hate it so we figured it wasn't a battle worth fighting.

Thanks for all of your thoughts and expertise.

On the WRAML-2, what does all over the place look like? Did he do differently on verbal vs visual, immediate recall vs delayed recall vs recognition? Contextual vs isolated? Any effect from repetition? It may be that there really is no clear pattern, but often it's just a more complex pattern than is immediately obvious.

If you want to pursue more testing, you could have some executive functioning testing done, such as the DKEFS, CATA, or CCPT (the latter two are in the Conners family, but are direct computer-administered measures, rather than rating scales).

It's two years for repeating any cognitive measure. (Years ago, it was one year, but research has found that re-test effects are still noticeable at one year.) But if you have the WPPSI at age 5, there's no restriction on having the WISC a year later.

Sorry to confuse you; I was referring to a different task, not on this test. Just another example of rapidly-changing cultural references.

Thanks for the test names.

WRAML-2 results: (everything is in percentiles)
Overall
Verbal Immediate Memory 50
Visual Immediate Memory 88
Concentration 12
General Memory 47

Verbal Memory Tasks
Story Recall 50
Story Delay 37
Story Recognition 91
Word Learning Recall 50
Word Learning Delay 75
Word Learning Recognition 16

Visual Memory Tasks
Design Recall 91
Design Recognition 9
Picture Memory 75
Picture Recognition 63

Concentration Tasks
Numbers 75
Sequences 16

So while his overall visual was higher than the verbal there were still big ranges in the tasks. The story recall/delay/recognition pattern was opposite of the word learning recall/delay/recognition pattern. There was a paragraph in the report summarizing the results but it didn't really do much other than state the above results and I don't see any true insight or recognized pattern either (but I also have no expertise).

He doesn't like things that he views as repetitive and boring (especially when we tested at 6.5 years old). Give him a challenge and the kid will sit there for hours but good luck getting him to do something he considers boring. Needless to say school is fantastic (where's the sarcasm font). He is getting better at doing some of it but his grades/work rarely reflects his intellect or knowledge. He just can't be bothered to show them what he can do (and at times he is held back by his processing speed and working memory weaknesses) which leads to them refusing to do anything for the gifted side because they want him to do 10 sheets of the grade level work first. It is fun.

So these are my thoughts:
His verbal recall memory is about average, while his visual recall memory is above average, but he appears to do better on recognition memory when the stimulus is meaningful, and in context. Notice the difference between story recognition and verbal learning recognition. His immediate and delayed recall are comparable on those two verbal tasks, but his recognition is quite different. Similarly, his immediate recall of visual images, in design and pictures, is strong for both areas, but recognition is markedly better with meaningful images (pictures) than with non-meaningful designs.

In the attention/concentration area, Number Letter is a verbal task, similar to digit span on the WISC-IV. Finger Windows (I assume that's what Sequences is) is a visual-spatial working memory task. Can you double check the index and subtest scores for Attention/Concentration? They don't make sense together.

Your anecdotal observations of him fit with this. Repetitive, rote tasks are not meaningful, and do not engage his memory and learning processes as well as tasks with a meaningful narrative thread and a contextual basis. He appears to respond well to meaningful cues, which allow him to "fish out" additional information from his memory, beyond what he can generate on his own. I would imagine that he does well when he can make connections between skills and concepts, but not so much when factoids or skills are learned in isolation. (read: personally irrelevant)