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    #224292 10/21/15 11:45 PM
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    3Gkids Offline OP
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    DD12 was tested a few years ago with the WISC4 and WIAT2 when she was 9. I never asked the psychologist what the scores meant as it turned out she is not gifted and I did not realize they were still meaningful. I have since found this forum so I am hoping someone can help me and tell me if there is anything unusual about them. These were her scores:

    VCI 106
    Similarities 11
    Vocabulary 13
    Comprehension 10

    PRI 119
    Block design 14
    Picture concepts 10
    Matrix reasoning 15

    WMI 123
    Digital span 14
    LN sequence 14

    PSI 112
    Symbol search 12
    Coding 12

    FSIQ 119

    Reading 120
    Word reading 116
    Reading comprehension 120
    Pseudo decoding 114

    Mathematics 156
    Numerical operations 151
    Maths reasoning 147

    Written Language 139
    Spelling 132
    Written expression 131

    Oral Language 113
    Listening comprehension 114
    Oral expression 107

    Total Achievement 136

    Last edited by 3Gkids; 10/22/15 06:28 PM. Reason: Change name
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    aeh Offline
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    Welcome!

    My first thought is that there are some nice solid scores here. It's nice to see some good strong scores in the efficiency areas (WMI and PSI), for a change.

    I do have some additional ideas, though. I notice that the evaluator chose picture completion instead of picture concepts for the PRI (assuming that is not just a typo by you). This subtest has a very low loading of general and fluid intelligence; actually picture concepts has the highest loading of any subtest on the WISC-IV. So they replaced a very good measure of general intelligence and higher-level reasoning with a rather poor measure of same. And lo, and behold, it's the lowest score she obtained on the test, and notably discrepant from the other two PRI subtests, which tends to make me suspect that these results are a slightly low estimate of your daughter's cognitive ability, especially in the nonverbal domains. Nothing leaps out at me to move the PRI into the GT range, necessarily, but I would certainly expect it to be in at least the upper 120s, based on the other two subtests.

    Secondly, even with what I suspect to be a low estimate of PRI, that is a notable difference between VCI and PRI--enough that, if the achievement numbers weren't what they are, I would want to keep an eye on possible language-based learning difficulties, even thought VCI is quite age-appropriate.

    As it happens, her achievement scores are quite healthy, with the oral language and reading areas pretty consistent with expectations based on her language-based ability testing (VCI) (reading may even be a little high). Written Language is a little higher than would be expected based on verbal ability, but very reasonable based on her abstract thinking skills. Math is the big revelation. These kind of numbers are quite rare, and are usually associated with much higher cognitive numbers. As I said, I do suspect that her cognitive numbers may be a low estimate, and her strengths do lie in the areas that are usually predictive of math ability (PRI, WMI). But even so, that's quite a showing.

    How has her math development proceeded in the intervening three years? If she continued this rate of progress even after moving into more abstract math, beyond variations of arithmetic, that would raise questions about how well the cognitive assessment captured her true ability. Alternatively, the results from three years ago may have been somewhat inflated by the limited expectations for that age group, in which case one would expect re-testing now to find math achievement still advanced, but not quite such an extreme outlier.

    Has she been happy and adequately challenged in school these past three years? That is more critical than her identification as GT or otherwise.

    BTW, if you were considering re-testing, I would probably advise waiting until next year, when the WISC-V will be released outside of North America. Then you can have the most recent norms. Plus, I like the index structure of the WISC-V better than the WISC-IV, and think it may highlight her strengths a little better.


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    3Gkids Offline OP
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    Thank you for the welcome. Apologies, it is a typo. It is indeed the picture concepts that scored a 10. My daughter is still doing extremely well in mathematics, it is the reason why I wanted to find out about her scores so I can work on some plans for dual enrolment at college in the near future.

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    aeh Offline
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    That sounds more like the cognitive assessment did not capture her full ability in the area of math (although it seems on target with respect to language). In that sense, yes, the scores are a little unusual, but not unheard of, especially for math-gifted students.

    With regard to her educational planning, though, I don't think the cognitive scores are as important as her continuing math achievement is. Math placement, especially for dual enrollment purposes, is usually quite straightforward, consisting, in most places, of college-administered content-specific testing. As long as she tests well enough on their placement testing, I don't think most colleges will care at all about cognitive testing.


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