Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment LOG - what would you call DD and DS?

Thanks George C. I calculated them myself, using the wisc iv guidelines online. :-) The tester (our school psych) provided me with FSIQ for DS (although stating it wasn't meaningful) but didn't even bother with DD. That is one of the few parts of this I am actually clear on! (Phew!)

When DS10 was tested at 8, I did come to these boards and do some reading, its just been a long while. And at the time, I had little hope of any help or acceleration from school. Now I think I do!

Just to clarify, while I agree that the GAI is probably a more accurate representation of a child's potential intelligence, doesn't the FSIQ have some role to play with non 2e kids in determining how easy it is for kids to display their full potential? Particularly in being able to work at higher levels at a speed that doesn't require extra support.

I'm just curious as I only have a FSIQ as a percentage so I'm not able to calculate the GAI anyway (I don't think). I just haven't heard that "most" professionals think GAI is a better indicator, having said that my research is limited to several professionals. rather than most.

I think you are right Squishy. I think I mean that given all necessary accommodations a GAI can indicate how well a child can go, but the FSIQ is more of a real world, no accommodation type IQ.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, as I say I don't have access to my kids GAI, it may well be higher or not so I have never had a vested interest in researching it fully. I just get a bit curious/concerned when I see a discussion about one being more important/relevant than the other, I think there was a recent thread discussing a Facebook page that wanted to exploit the differences recently.

It's my understanding that the most important figure is the one that best represents your kid.

ds8 has processing speed and working memory above the 99.9%ile and he still has a slight pause for basic facts so I am not sure that that is indicative. It just may be something to watch. It may never cause a problem and if it does I'm sure it can be managed.

I misspoke. I meant to say that most professionals think that GAI is a better indicator of LOG than FSIQ. Both measure potential ability, but ability of different things. It's apparently very common to find gifted kids with high VCI and PRI but average to low average PSI. If you need to use one measure as a "cutoff" for gifted programs, it's recommended to use GAI.

That's not to say the other subtests aren't important to consider. I was reading an interesting study (I forget where but I could find the link) that essentially demonstrated that a higher WMI provides advantages in school, whereas they weren't really able to correlate PSI to advantages.



This topic seems to cover the difference very well: http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/112015/FSIQ_vs_GAI.html

Totally agree that this kind of perspective is important. Most teachers are familiar with "gifted" kids and pushy parents, but not HG+ kids. And when you look at the numbers, you can't really blame them for the lack of familiarity.

In my experience the most effective means of explaining the rarity of HG+ kids has been to throw out ratios for the general population AND give stats relating to the frequency one could expect to have kids like this in the course of a career (as stated above).... BUT I'd be very careful about wording. Trying to explain kids to a teacher is a bit like trying to explain juries to a trial lawyer. You might have some good points, but it's easy to come across as arrogant and condescending.

Better to print out supporting statistics and say something like, "It's our understanding that if a teacher has 30 kids in his/her class every year, she/he would only see a kid at this IQ level or above every ___ years."

In terms of GAI and FSIQ, FWIW, when DS took the WISC and WIAT, the discrepancy analysis showed that he was performing MUCH closer to his GAI than what would be his FSIQ (the tester actually opined that the DYS-qualifying WISC was probably a low estimate, which frightened me a bit). I still think that both numbers are relevant, but they give slightly different pictures of his abilities.

While DD never had a discrepancy analysis, I would guess from her achievement scores, her results would be similar, where she performs closer to her GAI. Both DC have DYS-qualifying FSIQs (but for both we were told the GAI was a better measure), but GAIs approximately a standard deviation higher. Neither DC has been diagnosed as 2e. From reading these boards and from my own experience with my DC, I tend to think that this might not be an unusual pattern for a child with a high LOG.

GAI is recommended as the measure for the GT population, but FSIQ still improves g-loading somewhat, for the NT population, and certainly is informative for anyone (used intelligently).

interesting aeh, how then would I calculate GAI when I only have percentiles for the subtests (and FSIQ) Our Ed psych is no longer in our town and hard to get information out of. Are you saying FSIQ over estimates when you say it improves g loading? Or do I need another coffee?

Mahagogo, we Canadians also seem to be deemed insufficiently immature to cope with real scores, and are only given percentiles. Here's my MacGyver method:

You can turn percentiles in scores using this:
http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/shimels/Courses/Files/ConvTable.pdf

And then add them up and convert to a GAI using this:
http://images.pearsonclinical.com/images/assets/WISC-IV/80720_WISCIV_Hr_r4.pdf

The only problem is you can't identify/ count any points over 19, so if you have scores that are listed as 99.9th, you can't know if they were exactly 19 points, or higher. So your GAI could be a floor rather than an final answer.

aeh - am I making sense?