Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment help with scores?

Maybe someone here can help? My DS got the following scores on the WISC:

VCI 138
PRI 151
WMI 120
PSI 138

He also took the WIAT and his scores were all over the place. Some scores were 30+ points higher than predicted, some were 20 points lower. Any thoughts? I'm meeting with the psych in a few weeks to discuss, but I'm so curious.

Those are great scores! How old is your ds?

What you want to try to do is look at the patterns in the WIAT - were his highs/lows relative to where you'd expect them to be based on the strengths pattern in his WISC scores? You'll also want to look at subtest scores for the WISC if you have them - are they fairly consistent within each group (VCI, PRI, WMI, PSI), or are there large discrepancies on the subtests?

If you want more input from us, it would be helpful to post the WISC subtest scores and the WIAT subtest scores. It would also help to know if your ds is young, and if he was on task or distracted during testing.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Definitely excellent scores!

Happy to help, but as polarbear said, it will be easier to do so with some sense of the specific subtest scores on the WIAT. Some of the variation you are seeing may reflect the design strengths/limitations of the tests used, and/or the age of the child, but it's hard to comment on that without more info.

ps - it would also help to know why he was tested - was it just to test for giftedness or were you concerned about something?

polarbear

Thanks for responding!

My son was tested at 6.5. We were seeing some massive underachievement at school that didn't make sense.

WISC breakdown subtest scaled scores/percentile rank:
block design 17/99
similarities 17/99
digit span 11/63
picture concepts 19/99.9
coding 17/99
vocabulary 18/99.6
letter number sequencing 16/98
matrix reasoning 19/99.9
comprehension 14/91
symbol search 17/99

composite scores:
vCI 138
PRI 151
WMI 120
PSI 138
FSIQ 149
GAI 155

tester said that he got a "speed bonus" on one of the sections

wIAT III standard scores/percentile rank (I don't have subtest scaled scores for these, sorry):

listening comp 132/98
early reading skills 116/86
reading comp 107/68
math prob solving 145/99.9
alphabet writing fluency 106/66
sentence comp 113/81
word reading 113/81
pseudoword decoding 114/82
numerical operations 160/>99.9
oral expression 124/95
oral reading fluency 114/82
spelling 112/79
math fluency addition 115/84
math fluency subtraction 124/95
total achievement 129/97

Any insight would be greatly appreciated!!!

Well, he's solidly in the range for DYS membership, so I'd advise you to apply for that regardless of what else you learn.

He looks like a mathy kid! You may want to see if you have any math circles in your area or other problem-solving activities that he could participate in. What kind of underachievement are you seeing?

I think it's fairly common to see lower fluency scores in gifted kids, particularly when they are as young as your DS.

Great scores, though!

Thanks for posting the subtest scores - aeh can make sense of them, but fwiw it looks like the lower achievement subtest scores correspond to the lower VCI on the WISC. What type of underachievement were you seeing at school? Was he struggling with anything or doing "ok" but progressing slower than you'd expected? Was one subject area a concern or did he seem to be underachieving across all subjects? The WIAT subtests look at very specific skill sets; it helps to know what's going on with real-live academic classwork too

polarbear

His teacher says that he struggles with the following:
sounding out words
reading - he skips words, adds words, mispronounces words, inverts words
writing - very poor output, very poor spelling
math - can't tell the time, can't seem to remember any math facts, counts on his fingers

I am looking at the last page of his WIAT score. It says, "supports SLD hypothesis" and then "yes". Does that mean he has a learning disability? What's your take on this?