Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Can you help me make sense of these test results?

Just got back from my son's eval. I am very new to all this, so I am hoping someone can tell me what these mean. I am going back to meet with the evaluator later this week. I don't know if anyone remembers me, but I have an 11 year old son and we suspected stealth dyslexia..he can read well but he struggles in spelling.

WISC IV-

VCI 126
PRI 131
WMI 113
PSA 103

She said he has mild dysgraphia and it takes him longer than it should to copy a paragraph. She is referring us to a eye doctor for a vision assessment. She said his speech issue (articulation problem with the letter "R"-for which he gets weekly speech therapy) is also affecting his output.

That is all I know. Can anyone tell me more about what his scores mean? Does it mean he is gifted but has a learning disability?

Thank you!!!

Please keep in mind I don't know what most of the abbreviations and gifted "lingo" mean, so try to answer in layman's terms. Thanks!

She also told me that dysgraphia is a from of apraxia which I don't understand at all. I thought apraxia was what happens to a person who has had a stroke?

Do you have the subtest scores for the WISC IV?

Has he had a really thorough, high quality speech & language eval recently? What were the results?

Same with OT eval?

Apraxia refers to the inability to perform a learned motor task despite the physical ability (strength for example) and willingness to do the task. It is a neurological disorder of motor planning that can be caused by many different things. In adults it is usually due to stroke but there can be developmental causes for apraxia in children.

Patricia

No, these are the only scores I have now. I am going to meet with the evaluator on Wed. , at which time she will give me the full results.

He is receiving weekly speech therapy and did have a full speech eval at age 6. The only problem they noted was articulation of the letter "R." He speaks fine, except struggles with the r controlled vowels.

He has never had an OT eval.

Thank you. I will post the other results when I get them. She did a bunch of other tests but the only results I have so far are the ones I posted.

What is GAI and how did you calculate that number of 133? Is that the same as full scale IQ?

DS7 took WISC IV in January. At that time he did not like to write so his PSI was low. The psychologist said he may have dysgraphia, but he couldn't really tell until achievement test is done. For the past 3 months, ds has changed a lot. He started to write faster. His handwriting is still not good, but it is legible. We went to do the achievement test last Saturday. The psychologist said he did not see any signs of dysgraphia.

Like Dottie said the psychologist cannot ID a learning disability from the IQ test. However, he can suspect there is a problem. Then further testing can be done to determine the problem.

What is weird is that my son has beautiful penmanship and can write well. He struggles to spell and according to her, it takes him too long to write. I am not sure that taking too long to write is a problem, frankly. Why does it matter how long it takes someone to write?

Also when he was 4, he was tested and the results showed his IQ to be 143. Is it common for it to decrease like this?

In our experience, slow production speeds can cause problems with teachers in school, perhaps because of stereotypes about GT kids. If a teacher thinks that all GT kids produce results fast, a slow writer may be seen as "not anything special." Some teachers miss that a child may take in info very fast and yet may not write his answers at all quickly.

Slow production can be exacerbated by boring work--it was for my DS7. And that often makes the "He's not that smart" thing even worse, since the teacher figures that if he's THAT slow on the normal work, there's no way he should be doing anything harder. It becomes a reason not to differentiate the work.

To me, if the slow production isn't happening because writing hurts the child's hand or wears him out, then it isn't anything to get too worried about until/unless it causes problems. But I think it pays to be aware of what problems you might run into...

Yes, I agree that it pays to be aware of what problems might occur. Fortunatly, we homeschool-always have and always will-so I don't have to deal with teachers who are not very accomodating to slow production. I am glad that the 103 is not a huge problem.

After I meet with the evaluator tomorrow, I should have more
test scores to share with you all and more questions as well! I won't get the full written report for about a month, however. I am way more concerned about his spelling problems and oral reading fluency than him writing too slowly.