Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment wisc iv and wisc 5

So, I have been reading the posts about wisc iv and v. I know about the flynn effect. I also saw a post similar to the issue I am having. I wanted further feedback.

When my son was in 4th grade (age 9) I tested him. His GAI was 136. HIs FSIQ was 128. I had him tested this month again - he is now in 6th grade (age 11). His FSIQ is 113. Not sure of his GAI yet. So, he had a drop of 15 points. Any thoughts? He is being diagnosed with ADD inattentive and very mild dyslexia. We did several tests and the WIAT III has great variability (from grade equ 2 to 12).
Fifteen points seems a lot.

1. I assume he wasn't on any medication for either test?
2. How focused was he the second time?
3. Was it just one area that pulled down the FSIQ (like processing speed), or multiple areas?
4. Same tester or different tester? I get the impression that a poor tester could try to race through the test or not be as skilled at establishing rapport or getting answers out of the child. I think that could make a big difference.

no meds. I'm not sure about the focus. That's a good question. Multiple areas seemed to have pulled down the FSIQ (coding was super low -37 percentile but there were 4 others at 50 percentile).
It was a different tester. First test was early in the morning. Second test in the middle of the afternoon. This second test was done as a psychoeducation assessment battery but the IQ itself had a separate day.

I won't repeat my comments from the other thread, as it sounds like you have read them already, but those are all pretty much in play for your DC's situation.

Factors that affect focus are definitely places to look, including the ones already mentioned (medication, time of day, examiner/rapport). Another factor that particularly affects the VCI in dyslexic children is cumulative reduced exposure to deep reading vocabulary, which affects not only the vocabulary subtest, but also the similarities subtest (can't reason verbally if you don't know the words). Not uncommonly, I see small to moderate declines in VCI (mostly in the vocabulary subtest) over historical numbers in my adolescent students with a history of reading difficulties. With the removal of comprehension from the VCI, knowledge of academic vocabulary also becomes even more important.

BTW, 37th %ile is not technically super low (except in comparison to Very Superior scores), as it's not significantly different from the 50th %ile scores (scaled score 9, as opposed to 10). All solidly in the Average range. I'd be interested to know what else was at the 50th %ile. Were they the other CPI subtests? (symbol search, digit span, picture span)

Thanks black cat and aeh. I really appreciate your help.. I am anxious about all this... We have seen issues since 2nd grade and feel that mostly the school has done nothing.

2013 scores- WISC IV
VCI= 134 (similarities 18, vocabulary 17 and comprehension 12)
PRI=127 (block design 19, picture and matrix 12 each)
WMI=104 (digit span and letter number sequ 11 each)
PSI115 (coding 12 and symbol search 13)
FSIQ=128
GAI=136


2015 scores- WISC- V
VCI=121 (Similarities , Vocabulary and information 14 each)
VSI=117 (Block design 16, visual puzzles- 10)
Fri=100 (matrix & figure weights 10 each and picture concepts 13)
Wmi=103 (digit span 10 and picture span 11)
PSI=105 (coding 9 and symbol search 13)
FSIQ=113

Also on the Woodcock Johnson- we did one at age 7 (2012) and processing speed was 17% and now it is 20%.
We also did a Wiat-III.

What has changed:

Si, Vc
BD

What has remained the same:

MR, PC
DS
CD, SS

His GAI is 118, which is about the same drop as in his FSIQ (makes sense, as all of the significant change has been in GAI-related subtests).

I realize that the actual scaled scores and percentiles appear to have changed slightly on some of the ones I've listed as unchanged, but keeping in mind standard error, natural variation, and updated norms, those changes are insignificant. (As is the change in processing speed from 17%ile to 20%ile. That is literally one standard score point difference.)

I think the first place I would look in terms of concern is what I mentioned in my previous post about long-term effects on vocabulary acquisition from limited access to sophisticated vocabulary. How did his reading/writing come out on the WIAT?

yes. You make a very good point. The WIAT III was interesting for me. He has 6 above averages, 2 average and one below average.

listening comprehension- 126 (receptive vocabulary 124 and discourse 118)-- this is above average I think.
sentence building 79
sentence combining 101

reading- 118
math 91
sentence- 89
word reading 101
essay- 126
pseudoword decoding- 93
numerical 99
oral expression-129
orad reading- 93
oral reading accuracy 92
spelling 83
addition 89
subtraction 76
multiplication 73
any others seem okay to me (not that some of the ones above are not okay).

His oral language is quite good, in the above average range, and commensurate with either his old or his new VCI. (Though closer, I think, to his old VCI).

Reading comprehension is above average, still considered commensurate with verbal ability, and consistent with his oral discourse comprehension. Basic reading skills are not as good, though solidly average; well below either old or new VCI. Notice that his decoding deteriorates in performance level as the decoding task becomes more challenging. He can read real words in isolation at a decent level, but starts to slide in the range when reading unknown words, and when reading in connected text. This is a profile consistent with dyslexia.

Writing is even more diverse. His spelling skills are below average (often the one place you can still see normative deficits in compensated dyslexics), and far below his VCI. In composing sentences, I think there are some effects here from spelling. He was able to combine sentences in complex/compound sentence structures, showing cause/effect relationships, but had more difficulty with sentence building, where you are provided one word, that you must use correctly in a sentence entirely of your own making. Often kids who can't spell compensate for that on sentence combining by using only words that are in the stimulus sentences. On sentence building, you can't do that, so they end up being marked off quite a bit for spelling and mechanics. His essay is very good, up in the ballpark of his VCI, but that's partly because spelling isn't as much of a factor (kids self-censor vocabulary, limiting it to words in their fluent spelling vocabulary), and partly because it's scored primarily for ideas and length of written product. His processing speed is okay, so he probably generated a decently-long essay, and his verbal reasoning is excellent, so he is likely to have given sufficient ideas and details.

Math is in the average range for computations and problem solving, which is okay. Lower than his VCI, but on par with his FRI, which is a better predictor of math ability than VCI is. Fact fluency, however, is generally below average. With decent processing speed, this probably isn't because of pure speed reasons; it looks more like the kind of automaticity problems that a lot of dyslexics and dysgraphics have.

(I'm assuming that the first "reading" refers to reading comprehension, and "math" to math problem solving.)

So his strengths and weaknesses pretty much line up with a kid with relative strengths in verbal comprehension, in the (Superior to) Very Superior range, but a compensated dyslexic profile, affecting automaticity of basic skills: phonetic decoding/decoding fluency, encoding, and math fact fluency.

Aeh... thank you, thank you, thank you! you rock!! This was VERY helpful to me.
yest to both assumptions regarding the reading/math.

What should I be doing to help him? Anything in particular?