Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Should I be concerned?

I was speaking with a mom from t-ball who was a teacher for the gifted pull-out class in a public school for several years. She is now a regular ed kindgergarten teacher in a ps. Anyway, she was asking about ds6's scores b/c she knew we had him gifted tested last year. She said these scores indicate a nonverbal learning disability because of the discrepancy in verbal and nonverbal IQ scores on the SBV. DS6 scored 24 points higher on verbal than nonverbal. Nonverbal scores fell in the high average (90th percentile) and verbal was in the very advanced range (99.8th percentile). His full scale IQ is identified as very advanced (98th percentile).

He doesn't seem to have any difficulty learning anything. But, when someone mentions learning disability it concerns me. He does seem to do better with verbal tasks rather than visuospatial tasks. His relative knowledge score seemed low compared with his ability which the tester noted in his report. We attributed this to lack of exposure and not being challenged for two years at school. Most people who meet ds are amazed at his knowledge, so go figure. Any thoughts?

You could ask the psychologist... but my guess is that if you're not seeing him struggle, it's more that he is very strong in the verbal domain and the nonverbal is just a relative weakness.

JenSMP- how funny! Our DS had a huge discrepancy between his V and NV scores on the SB-V too. I actually asked our tester immediately upon seeing the scores if DS had a LD and he (nicely) laughed at me. Our DS: NVIQ:115(84), VIQ:139(99.5)

Not sure if it applies to you but our tester suggested that the non-verbal sections were just not interesting to DS. As a result of both boredom and his young age (3.9 yrs), he was easily distracted and started playing around. Because of this, our tester believed that both scores (verbal and non-verbal) were an underestimation. (our tester is no longer using the SB-V either)

I'm sure your tester can give you more insight or a gut feeling about your DS but, overall, I wouldn't stress the LD.

P.S. Because of DS's low non-verbal score, we need to retest. Just trying to decide how, when and with what measure . . . Uggg!

Thank you! I hate to be such a worrier, but when she mentioned "learning disability" it certainly caught my attention. The psychologist wasn't concerned about that at all. I've spoken to him multiple times since the testing, and he felt ds was strong in all areas, just strongER in verbal. But, I had to ask! Now that I'm homeschooling, I should be able to get a handle on how he learns best and whether or not there are any areas of concern. That's interesting about the knowledge subtest on the SB-V. I know our family was surprised by the score on that one. I appreciate your input and explanation. Very helpful.

sittin pretty-I'd actually like to have the testing done with a different test once ds is a little older. He's still just 6, so maybe we'll wait until next year. I'm not sure exactly what purpose it will serve (other than to just provide us with more info) as we are homeschooling right now. Ds was just tested in March of this year. Good luck with the re-testing. I just noticed the difference in your ds's verbal and nonveral scores was also 24 points (same as my ds!) with the SB-V. Very interesting.

Dd#1 did really poorly on the knowledge subtest on the SBV and had scores all over the place on the whole test in general (I believe 16th-99th percentile). The 16th was knowledge. From the way the tester described the knowledge test to me, it didn't sound like a test of knowledge at all but more a test of looking for the thing that didn't fit or was wrong with the picture.

Dd had some very eccentric ways of looking at what was wrong. I'll give a made up example so that I'm not potentially giving away test questions should the example the examiner gave me happen to be a real question. Dd, for example, would be looking at a picture of an upside down tree and in terms of what was wrong with the picture would answer something like 'it has maple leaves, but an aspen trunk and I don't believe that you can graft those two types of trees together.'

If what the tester told me was accurate, I don't even know why that test would be called knowledge.

Our DS did EXACTLY the same thing on this section. Completely ignored the "obvious" answer and nit-picked the details. Of course . . . he's like that 24/7 so I shouldn't be surprised.

My DS8's verbal score is 13 points higher than nonverbal score on the SB5. Also, his knowledge index score is the lowest of all.
(94th percentile) Furthermore, there is a huge difference between nonverbal knowledge(scaled score 10) and verbal knowledge.(18)

I asked the psychologist about it. He said that the low nonverbal knowledge score is partly based on his learning style and may be partly based on attention. He may not have been as interested or tuned in to the pictures as he was to the word problems/stimuli. He is more of a verbal learner. The psych reminded me that score of "10" looks "deficit" when the rest of the scores are in the 16/17/18, it is average, not an area of deficit compared to the normative population. He said that many/most kids and adults have significant variation in subtest scores.
Hope this helps.