Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment WISC-IV - Should we be concerned with discrepancy?

I would keep an eye on the fine motor aspect of things, as that can impact work completion, which can affect how teachers perceive skills, which, of course, affects their grading and recommendations for more challenging coursework. Once one reaches the upper levels, where keyboarding is the norm, handwriting is not as critical.

Cursive is often easier for kids with some fine motor or dysgraphic issues, as there are fewer initiations.

Although sully's ds' coding and symbol search scores aren't "low" in an absolute sense, they are very low compared to his other scores. Although this may not be uncommon among HG/+ kids, it *is* something that tracks with the other symptoms sully noted which, as aeh noted, may indicate a challenge with fine motor - which in turn, can potentially be an issue for a child at school.

If you only looked at my dysgraphic ds' coding and symbol search scores on the WISC, it would be easy to think there's no issue. If you look at the discrepancy between PSI and VIQ/PRI, then yeah, there's a large discrepancy but it would be easy to say "this is a not-so-unusual pattern in HG/+ kids". BUT…. in real life ds has obvious struggles with fine motor issues. So put that all together, and you understand what's going on isn't just perfectionism. Kids who are perfectionists with academics aren't necessarily typically slow with other fine motor tasks etc.


This description fits my dysgraphic ds to a tee at the same age. We also thought his slowness etc were due to perfectionism, but we were wrong. Neurospych testing, which includes not only WISC, but achievement testing, observation of handwriting and review of academic work plus additional tests of fine motor etc revealed ds has Developmental Coordination Disorder and related fine motor dysgraphia. FWIW, ds is also an excellent skier. Totally unrelated motor skill set required for skiing

polarbear

Yes. You might want to consider further testing to include achievement (with measures of fluency), and occupational therapy (visual-perceptual, fine-motor).

Not necessarily; but maybe. As it is a computer-administered multiple choice test, there are negligible fine motor demands. It is true that being untimed is likely to favor a child with processing speed issues. But only one problem is presented at a time, which could help with visual organization. It might be meaningful if he did way better on this measure than a similar measure that required significant pencil skills.