Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment WISC-IV today: just shy of YS req...apply anyway?

Looks like I was underestimating my 7 year old. We are very relaxed homeschoolers but I have been facing persistent perfectionism (she gives up before she tries) so we decided to seek out further evaluation in hopes of gaining more information on how to best serve her educationally.

I am awaiting the full written report for me to pour over and study (I do much better with reading than listening), but I talked with the administering psychologist and feel like I have a little more insight to my daughter's brain. I think. Mostly I have a page filled with numbers and bits and pieces of remembering what she told me about each point.

Full Sale IQ: 135, 99%

Verbal Comprehension Index (VCI): 142, >99%
Similarities: 19, >99%
Vocabulary: 16, 98%
Comprehension: 16, 98%

Perceptual Reasoning Index (PRI): 121, 92%
Block design: 10, 50%
Picture concepts: 14, 91%
Matrix reasoning: 16, 98%

Working Memory Index (WMI): 116, 86%
Arithmetic: 14, 91%
Digit span: 11, 63%
Letter-number seq.: 12, 75%

Processing Speed Index (PSI): 126, 96%
Coding: 17, 99%
Symbol search: 12, 75%

There was also a Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement II where her reading comprehension was 121 (3.3 grade level equivalent) and mathematical concepts was 128 (3.3 grade level).

So she doesn't qualify for the Davidson Young Scholars program with her highest score being VCI at 142 and 145+ being the minimum. Should we apply anyway and provide work samples and cross our fingers? Or is that a waste of effort? I can only think of providing a video of her reading, maybe some of her writing work...?

While I eagerly await the full written report, can anyone give me more insight on what these numbers really mean? Is there, like, a 'WISC-IV Results for Dummies' out there?

The psychologist who tested your daughter is probably the best person to ask, as s/he knows her and observed her during the test.

The requirements for the DYS program are here. They have a lot of different categories with score requirements, which might help you decide.

Val, I was just looking for anything to dive into while I wait for the full written report

She doesn't meet any of the minimum requirements for Young Scholars (3 points shy of the 145+ minimum on VCI). I guess I was wondering if anyone had applied and been accepted being just shy of the minimum.

It can't hurt to try I guess. I would think that just shy meant a fsiq of 144 though.

I tend to agree with puffin about what I would consider "just shy."

If you get the subtest scores that went into calculating the VCI and PRI, you could see if the GAI is 145 or above. The sum of the scaled scores of those 6 subtests would need to be 97 or greater.

I have a it of a different take on this - rather than worrying about getting into DYS at the moment, I'd ask the psychologist a few questions that might help you understand your dd's learning profile a bit better. It appears she has some significant relative score discrepancies between VCI/PRI/WMI and PSI. It's possible that the reason you're seeing your dd "give up before she tries" isn't due to a motivation problem, but possibly a learning challenge that's related to the high-vs-average WISC scores. What looks like perfectionism might actually be a child who is having a tough time coming up with some part or piece of the answer to whatever they are being asked to do. It doesn't mean they aren't incredibly bright or that they don't know the answer, just that something's breaking down somewhere in getting the information together or getting it out or getting it recorded. I sincerely thought my 2e ds was a shy perfectionist before he was diagnosed with dysgraphia and expressive language challenges.

There are many different things that might be behind such a wide range in scores - I'd start by asking the psychologist if your ds was on task and attentive during testing or if he appeared to lose focus and/or was tired. If the psych feels the test is representative of your ds' profile of abilities, ask the psych what his/her opinion is re why the range of test scores, and ask if he/she did any additional testing to help determine why those challenges exist.

I would also talk to your son and try to get information from him, ask him if he's frustrated or purposely going slow or (whatever) when he's working at home. Ask what he's thinking about when he's writing. Ask if it feels the same when he's working at school if it does when he's home doing homework. Ask if he understands what he's supposed to be doing in the assignment. Basically ask enough to get him talking about his work, and see if there is anything that starts to make sense when looked at in combination with the WISC scores.

Best wishes,

polarbear

I think the psych's narrative and clinical observations have the potential to be even more important to properly understanding her scores than usual. There is quite a bit of diversity, both between and within indices, affecting pretty much every index.

One pattern of note is that she appears to do better with the abstract reasoning tasks than with the more concrete tasks within VCI and PRI (which are the reasoning-heavy indices that contribute to the GAI). For example, she did best on the most abstract verbal reasoning task (Si), and well, but less so, on the more concrete verbal tasks. Likewise, she did better on the two conceptual tasks in PRI, and not as well on the concrete task (BD). Although there is generally less reasoning on the CPI indices, the pattern appears to hold there. In WMI, her best performance was on the task that includes a little mathematical reasoning (Ar), while the rote memory tasks were not as strong. (Both PSI subtests are measures of mostly rote speed, with negligible abstraction, but even there, she did better on the one that is more amenable to strategies involving memory and learning (Cd).)

If we hypothesize that there is a gap between her ability to grasp high-level concepts and her ability to implement them in concrete applications, then it becomes not quite as surprising that she is achieving at the level of her concrete applications, rather than her abstract-conceptual reasoning. In particular, her isolated working memory (meaning, when the task does not allow as much cognitive compensation) is quite average, in contrast to her exceptional verbal reasoning, which has the potential for limiting the amount of data that she can process at once. One can easily imagine that she becomes frustrated when her working memory (often likened to the whiteboard of the mind) runs out of space to hold all the components on which she feels that she should be able to exercise her problem-solving and reasoning capacities.

Think of it this way: It is very possible that tasks that fit into her working memory are not sufficiently challenging for her abstract thinking, but tasks that are appropriate to her conceptual thinking ability require managing too many components for her working memory. So most tasks would then be both too easy and too hard for her at the same time.

Oh man, aeh, that sums things up too much. Are there resources for this? As a homeschooler I'm sort of flailing around now in an I-don't-know-what-to-do state.

Thank you, polarbear, I've started a list of questions that I plan to email the psychologist, starting with some of your points. I'm not super concerned with DYS, but the resources sounded nice.

fjzh, you've mentioned a strategy of your own in passing, when you described yourself as doing better with reading than with listening. Glance back at the description of working memory as the whiteboard of the mind. Well, a straightforward compensatory strategy for having a small mental whiteboard is externalizing it--write things down. In order to reduce the working memory component of an abstract reasoning or conceptual understanding task, use visuals--including graphic organizers, encourage her to write steps down, scribe steps for her as she verbalizes them, provide her with reference charts.

Aim for conceptual, big picture, understanding before introducing the nitty-gritty components; it will give her a meaningful framework into which to place the details, so she won't be holding a disorganized mass of isolated points in her mind, but a small selection of connected conceptual categories. This reduces the effective number of points on her mental whiteboard. Make sure she understands the personal relevance and practical application of academic skills and knowledge. She will have more vivid "hooks" for organizing them. Along with this, experiential learning is likely to be more effective than isolated skills instruction. Perfect for relaxed homeschooling!

And you are homeschooling, so you don't have to design a factoid-laden education for her. In the long-term, professionals rarely memorize; they remember the most frequently used figures, formulas, etc., but use their reference works for everything else. (I remember investing time into memorizing various metabolic cycles in undergraduate biochem class, and then entering graduate school and finding that many labs had them posted on the wall.) As she is relatively early in her education, and not actually incapable of memorizing, it is reasonable to include some level of memory work for math facts or handwriting, or spelling, as these are skills for which automaticity can smooth the way for higher-level problem-solving, but I would separate basic skills work from reasoning/conceptual work.

Allow her to follow her passions; you may even be able to co-opt them to weave in some other academic skills or content that you believe will be valuable to her future. When she finds something for which she has a personal fascination, I would not be surprised if she is able to remember and integrate all kinds of apparent trivia--because its personal meaning is intense enough that she has emotional structures organizing them.

There are some nice parent-friendly suggestions for working memory development on this page:

https://www.understood.org/en/schoo...k-study-skills/8-working-memory-boosters

Peg Dawson's "Smart but Scattered" is a go-to book on executive functions in general, of which working memory is one:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1593854455/