Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Testing discrepancy - questions

My dd, 8, did the NWEA MAP testing in early spring of 2nd grade and she scored in the 99th percentile in Reading and Language Usage with lexile score (text) in the 1050-1150 range. My husband and I have always known she was a bright child as did all of her teachers yet we were frustrated by the lack of enrichment opportunities and school work at her level. We were relieved to have something tangible - finally! - to help guide us in how to advocate for her needs.

We decided also to have cognitive testing done for her to provide further guidance. This was yesterday and we are just stymied by her scores which came out in the low-average to gifted range. She had a very wide range of composite scores ranging from a composite score of 88 in Processing Speed to the upper end of the 120s in Perceptual Reasoning. In Block Design, she scored an 11 when timed, and without timing, it was 19. Her verbal scores were actually a relative weakness compared to her scores on the perceptual and working memory subtests.

The examiner was baffled by the range of the scores as well as other behaviours - some attentional quirks yet very focused, giving responses considerable thought before deciding they were too hard instead of just saying "I don't know", very slow processing speed and her perfectionism showing up during some of the testing (especially verbal subtests) and yet not in others (perceptual reasoning). Perfectionism is a hallmark of my dd's personality as has her need to do things in her own time. So it's never been a surprise to us that every one of her report cards has the comment "needs more time to complete work."

Anyway, my question is...how can the huge discrepancy between the MAP scores - which shows language as a significant strength and math as a relative weakness - and the new WISC-IV scores which shows the opposite, be explained?

I'm wondering if having the one-on-one interaction with the examiner (with whom she got along quite well) actually resulted in lower scores because of her perfectionism/unwillingness to take risks where there's room for different interpretations. MAP testing is done with the computer and it's all multiple-choice. Much less room for error and risk-taking there.

We'll have the full report in a couple of weeks time so hopefully the examiner - who is considerably experienced in evaulating gifted children - will be able to shed some light on this too.

Thank you!

I'm no expert, but I'll chime in to back gratified on the notion of speed NOT being a necessary requirement for being HG+. I always say that I think there are (at least) two forms of GTness: fast and deep. Fast thinkers get hard things immediately (or almost) and thrive on timed tests. Deep thinkers don't get things quickly necessarily, but they tend to be "big picture" kids who put pieces together in surprisingly complex or creative ways.

Don't overextend the theory, of course. I mean, deep kids can do some things fast and fast kids can think creatively. It's more about the kid's usual M.O.

The other thing I'll bring up as a distant possibility--and please don't let this worry you!--is that I believe this sort of score discrepancy can be indicative of some learning disability. But as perfectionism can look much the same--and you already KNOW she's a perfectionist!--I really don't want to scare you. I just know that if I were in your shoes, I'd be asking about it just to make absolutely sure it's not an issue that needs attention. On stuff like that, I figure better safe than sorry, you know?

I'm betting it's perfectionism. I think you're right. My son is deep-not-fast, and we've had many of the same issues with completing work in a timely fashion. His scores on timed tests are always lower. Precision isn't rewarded in some of those tests.

Thank you, Dottie and gratified3!

I forgot to mention in my OP that the MAP math score was in the 89th percentile.

Anyway, your responses have helped me understand both the testing and the discrepancies much better. It's not really the numbers I'm concerned about, but why and you both did a great job of explaining that.

What's interesting is that both DH and I have never really thought of our dd has a math/science kid although for a period of her early years (until beginning of 1st grade) she was all about science, but reading has always been the most obvious strength. Even so, we've both thought of her as more verbally gifted and the MAP scores seemed to reflect that, though I do understand that those are achievement-based vs. cognitive-based constructs. The frustrating thing is that she cannot or perhaps does not want to allow anyone entrance into her mind so that we (parents and teachers) can know that she really does understand what she reads. I wonder if the multiple choice format might be the best approach to getting at what she does know, but I imagine that can hardly begin to approach the depth of her understanding. With the computer or multiple choice, there's no one to judge her responses. She doesn't even like it when something she's written has been read aloud! I think there's a lot in there that she's not sharing. And we're hardly the kind of parents who interrogate her and force her to do things, kwim? I need to do more reading up on Dabrowski's overexcitabilities as well.

Anyway, we're both finally relieved that we have something "official" that we can bring to her teacher to help her (hopefully) accomodate our dd's learning style. What's interesting is that her kindergarten teacher really pegged her learning style (esp. with respect to the perceptual and memory stuff) - she was eerily spot on - and all of her other teachers since then just haven't been able to understand her nearly as well.

While my dd is a perfectionist, the examiner yesterday said that she didn't see a whole lot of that exacting side of my dd especially in the coding subtest - that threw a bit more confusion into the fray. And this is the child who has been known on more than one occasion to use her non-dominant hand to guide her pencil point as she writes.

The perfectionism has been really tough though - her teacher last year was not particularly understanding of it and was frustrated with my dd because her work was often not completed and she'd have to stay in at recess to complete it or bring it home (where she'd end up still not completing it...). My dd goes to counseling now for the perfectionism issue, but I wonder if she needs more than what she's been getting (once a month) and it really needs to focus on just the perfectionism. Extrinsic rewards are not big motivators for my dd and punishment of any sort (on the teacher's part) results in a child who will dig in her heels and wait until you break. She has staying power, that's for certain.

She's definitely a deep thinker, but, as her examiner pointed out yesterday, what will she do when her teacher and classmates can't/don't want to wait for her to respond anymore? Yesterday, average testing time according to the examiner was 2 hours. My dd took three hours to complete the test.

Thanks so much for your input - reading about others' experiences is so helpful.

Just had to comment on this ... I made the same mistake when my DS6 was small. His reading was just so *obvious*. However, as he got older, his mathy side had really blossomed. His verbal and spatial IQs were within a point of each other on his WPPSI.

I wonder if it has to do with having fewer daily opportunities to "practice" math, especially the mathy spatial thinking that isn't calculations, when the child is young. It would make perfect sense for a very perceptual child not to shine in early elementary mathematics, which is heavily fact-based and not reasoning based, kwim?

We also use the MAP assessment both at ds's public K last year and at his new first grade this year. I like that it isn't limited by grade level but will keep presenting new questions to fully determine the child's level. Very helpful -- but it took a long time to narrow down my poor kindergartner's level!

Welcome!

CFK: What do you consider low PSI and WMI? Are you looking at difference between VCI/PRI vs PSI/WMI or are you looking at percentile? Stated in another way, would a difference of 39 pts between VCI and PSI w/ PSI being avg (109) present a problem? Are would you only consider PSIs below the avg range to be problematic in a school setting? KWIM?

Dazey

I can speak from experience that any difference between VCI/PRI and PSI/WMI can cause what Dottie and Grinity (and maybe others?) call a "bottleneck." This can cause problems to varying degrees for a child in school. CFK makes a good point, I think.

DS7 has almost a 30-point difference between his PRI and his WMI, and a more than 40-point spread between his PRI and his PSI. (And both WMI and PSI are still above average.)

I always thought of him as a dawdler, and his teachers all commented on it. But once I saw his scores, I realized that that's not fair to him. He's HG+, but his scores mean that he can't hold things in his head and manipulate them much better than an ND child, and he's no faster than an ND child either. This can greatly affect what he's capable of doing. It looks willful, but it's not. He's deep but not fast...and he can't be any faster. He's not GT in the speed department.

However--and I think this is important--I would argue that this sort of "bottleneck" should really be treated as an LD would be, since that's how it plays out for him. Consider a child in the middle of the bell curve with a 100 PRI trying to succeed in school with a 60 PSI and a 70 WMI: he's going to struggle. Now, I don't think the scores translate quite that directly, but I do think that DS7's scores present something of a similar frustration. Adaptations are really called for.

For example, instead of focusing a lot on mental math--which we were doing a lot of before he took the WISC, a strategy that was frustrating for both of us and took SO much time--post-WISC, I started having him write things down. If he can see the math problem and doesn't have to hold so much in his working memory, then he is more capable of using his extensive PRI to solve the problem. It's an adaptation that helps him use what he's got to the best of his ability. We still do some mental math, but it's with the realization that it's not his strength. We spend a little time on it to improve his skills instead of a lot of time on it. Much happier math time is had by all!

Of course, this LD-light approach works better in situations where the teacher is flexible, has some understanding of GTness and IQ tests, and is willing to teach to a child's strengths and build gently upon his/her weaknesses. Not everyone is going to understand that an HG+ child needs both a bigger challenge AND more time to do the problem...

Indeed. I just think it's good to be aware of things like LDs so that you can get appropriate help early if (and only if!) it's called for. I don't want to be a troUblemaker though. That's for sure!

I agree wholeheartedly, CFK. If DS7's test scores hadn't lined up with what his teachers and I had been seeing all along, I wouldn't have trusted them as much as I do.

A 10-point spread might not matter at all. Our 40-point spread was pretty huge, and was very visibly a challenge for us to deal with! No doubt about it!

Dazey: keep in mind that a test score is a snapshot of one moment in time. Sometimes snapshots catch us making a funny face and not looking like ourselves at all. Sometimes they catch us completely as we are. You have to decide what makes sense in your child's case. If the evidence you have doesn't make sense, then you have to get more evidence.

Just don't discount what you see. Scores are one day; your experience with the child is EVERY day!

Very sound advice from everyone!

That said, now that more of the testing results have come in and we've had a couple of days to ruminate on things, I have more questions now than I did when going in.

Got another email from the examiner yesterday - while language-based tasks seemed to be more difficult for my daughter, her VCI was very close to her PRI - the PRI, I think had more scatter than her VCI. Her VCI came out to 121 and her PRI was 125 - I was sure, going in, that her scores would be higher, but they were not. FSIQ was 118 and GAI was 127. If our school had gifted programming, none of these would get her in at all! So, now we await to see what the examiner recommends. It seems to be that while my dd is a bright kid, we are not going to get the full picture of her from testing. She's a deep kid, but we may never know how deep unless she's willing to open up.

So, now what does a school do with a kid with an ability to read at 8th grade level (from her lexile score), has low-average processing speed (in real-world stuff, it's probably even slower than what her PSI suggests), and is a very private/perfectionistic child? How does a teacher work with that and how does a parent advocate for a such a child?