Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research PG? Husband is a skeptic, I am on the fence

Hmm: if the description in your last post is accurate, your examiner did not provide an entirely standardized administration (leaving out the testing-of-limits using the WAIS), as your DS should not have had access to an eraser on the Processing Speed tasks. The directions are clear on using a pencil without an eraser, specifically to avoid the situation you described. Examiners are also supposed to demonstrate that if you change your mind about a response, you indicate it by crossing out the undesired response. This raises some questions about the standardized administration (and, consequently, accuracy) of your remaining scores.

ETA: I think you can safely table any concerns about processing speed raised by testing, if there are no IRL reasons for concern.

It is interesting, the point about the eraser. She is a local professor, so I'd assume she is doing a pretty good job in administering the test, but I am unsure if the eraser was used during the processing speed task (are there tasks without processing speed measurement?). I am also unsure if there was access to an eraser or if DS just used his finger or something else to try to erase. i.e. if the problem was because DS was not following instruction. Coincidentally my DS likes to goof and not following instructions, so I can't be sure if he is not the one to blame.

The WAIS was administered just to satisfy curiousity, because she knew that he hit the VS ceiling in WPPSI IV three years ago, and it was by a good margin.. He spent only 1/3 of the allotted time on the hardest block problem. She mentioned upfront that she'd let him work on WAIS VS materials if he hit the ceiling again, but that it would not be used for scoring. He basically maxed out in both WISC V and WAIS materials for blocks, as well as WISC V for puzzles, she didn't try WAIS puzzles on him. It was a good information for us, I guess, because otherwise, we'd be pondering about where his limit is, since we'd have to wait 10 more years in order to do WAIS test - if we want a higher ceiling. We waited 3 years to do WISC V to get more information using the higher ceiling and didn't expect to hit the ceiling again this time.

Testing of limits with the WAIS is not so much a problem, since that was purely for clinical information. If she gave only the WISC (and items from the WAIS), there are no tasks that involve pencils other than the timed processing speed subtests. Some other subtests are timed, and can be affected by speed (Block Design, and to a lesser degree, Visual Puzzles, Figure Weights, and Arithmetic). Generally, finger erasure doesn't work very well, so I would be surprised if he stopped more than once to attempt erasing with his finger. Regardless, having access to something that he was able to use multiple times for erasure suggests that the processing speed measures are low estimates, and unlikely to worth additional consideration. (Unless, as I mentioned, you have IRL concerns.)

I see.. Thanks for the education. I am not concerned about his processing speed, because he is doing ok at school so far. Right now my main worry is his VS being so high (too high for our current parenting skills and the time we have to dedicate to him), a lot of wisdoms I learned in this thread, we just need to grit our teeth and ride the roller coaster ride, I guess, and "feed the beast" as best as we can.

We also have a highly VS son, around your son's age (he also hit the ceiling on the VS and MR tasks on WPPSI IV as a young 4 year old - he thought the block design was "very easy")...Our experience with puzzles (did 100 piece puzzles around his 2nd b-day, when puzzles were an obsession of his), Legos and block construction has also been interesting (as a young 5 year old, he constructed a 16+ Lego Creator Expert set in a couple of days all by himself). We haven't felt the need to retest, as we are quite sure he is in the very extreme tail in VS skills...but I would also be interested in how to provide activities for a young VS kid like that (other than Lego:) ) In elementary school, I think extremely verbally gifted kids will stand out more than extremely VS kids (although at least in our case, DS is several years ahead in math with very minimal instruction)? I think if your son is happy for now in school, that's wonderful!

Some interesting reading on VS gifts:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/recognizing-spatial-intel/

http://www.visualspatial.org/

http://geri.education.purdue.edu/PDF%20Files/EyeToEye.pdf

And search "visual spatial" in the Davidson resource/article database, where I found this interesting little piece on artistic giftedness (FYI, there's a nude sketch in it, in case that matters to anyone here):

http://www.growminds.com/TheArts/GTinArt.htm

Chess - learning it systematically is an excellent pursuit for a child with strong visual spatial skills.

aeh,

These are great articles about visual spatial giftedness. My DS7 got the highest composite score on VSI on WISC-V so he's most gifted in VS.

My question is: is it possible to be both visual spatial learner and auditory/sequential learner? From one of your links, it showed the differences between the two. Besides strong in VS, my DS also has some characteristics of the auditory/sequential learners, such as learned phonics easily, can sound out spelling words, can write quickly and neatly, has great rote memorization and has good auditory short-term memory.

Curious to know if the other areas of the giftedness have contributed to these.

Thanks

Those links are excellent. Only now it's not a question of giftedness vs ADHD, it's giftedness vs ADHD vs VS! (Or all three in one, yikes!)

To be honest we are always on the fence. We got the testing done because of school requirement, we thought we just had a normally bright kid. He never really practiced with puzzles, so I was baffled when he hit the ceiling for the puzzles as well. He'd do puzzles sporadically in a step function, like once every six months or so. I tried to teach him reading when he was younger, but when I tried to spell the alphabets, he said "Mommy, just read!!". But his reading comprehension was already at chapter book level back when he was at preschool. His reading took off a year ago and he has been on chapter books since, but it took my husband getting home late from work to force him to read the chapter book to himself. We've always been in a play based school, including now at elementary school and he is thriving. My main problem is the summer, I am worried that I might run out of summer programs next year, we already begged to get into the program for 8-12 yo, and I don't know what to do when that is outgrown. He already outgrew the tech programs from a couple companies for that age group, so we will stick to the other provider until he outgrows that too, but I worry that next year he'd say that it is now also too easy.