Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Help understanding WISC-IV Score

Hello, my son has been having a very difficult time in school over the last year and a half (he's a Junior in high school now) and was recently tested by the child study team at his school. I could really use some help deciphering some of these scores and what they may indicate.

VCI: 134
-Similarities (37 Raw/14 Scaled/91th Percentile)
-Vocabulary (62 Raw/15 Scaled/95th Percentile
-Comprehension (41 Raw/18 Scaled/99.6th Percentile)

PRI: 94
-Block Design (54 Raw/11 Scaled/63rd Percentile)
-Picture Concepts (18 Raw/7 Scaled/16th Percentile)
-Matrix Reasoning (24 Raw/9 Scaled/37th Percentile)

WMI: 97
-Digit Span (18 Raw/10 Scaled/50th Percentile)
-Letter-Number Sequencing (19 Raw/9 Scaled/37th Percentile)

PSI: 94
-Coding (CD) (78 Raw/11 Scaled/63rd Percentile)
-Symbol Search (SS) (28 Raw/7 Scaled/16th Percentile)

I really appreciate any input on this matter. Thank You.

-Craig

Maybe it would help if you could give us some idea what kinds of difficulties your child is experiencing in school? I am no expert on IQ tests, but I know my own kids tend to have unusual scatter, and this seems to go hand in hand with experiencing specific roadblocks while learning. By a "roadblock" I mean a problem/difficulty which once overcome (which can happen rather suddenly) then leads to very rapid learning in that area. I think children with that kind of learning profile might be more challenging to teach. I enjoy that challenge though (at least with my own children). These "roadblocks" seem different from learning disabilities in the sense that once overcome they are no longer a problem. I suppose another way of saying the same is my kids in some areas are late bloomers, but they do bloom impressively when it is their time to do so. I am not sure what a LD profile would look like on an IQ test, but maybe it could be similar? Your child has impressive scores on the verbal section, by the way!

My son has been having trouble concentrating, on both simple and complex tasks where he had no problems before. He approaches objectives with hesitation and anxiety and is frustrated with his current state.

When it comes to learning, my son does extremely well with visual and oral stimuli. He's always said that he learns more from watching television than at school. He just absorbs what he sees and hears.

Of recent, his inability to concentrate and accomplish tasks has led to depression (or vice versa, we won't really know until his medication takes effect).

Dear Craig, Your son is twice-exceptional-- both gifted with learning difficulty. The discrepancy between his highest and lowest scores is more than two standard deviations. Likely, he has not been diagnosed with a LD because his giftedness compensates for his weakness. This is the case with my son. Please google 2e and look it up on Hoagies gifted page. You need to confer with an educational psychologist or neuropsych as well. Your son may not qualify for an IEP, but he might qualify for an accommodation that will make school more engaging and meaningful (fewer papers due for instance). 2e kids often experience depression because they know they aren't accomplishing what they feel capable of. Does he have trouble getting written work completed on time? Your son scored in the gifted range on verbal comprehension (the 134), but in the average range (just below the norm of 100) on processing speed (which is a measure of pencil and paper eye-hand processing rather than thinking speed) and on working memory (which is how much auditory/verbal data he can manipulate mentally at one time). It is not uncommon for gifted kids to score lower on these two tests, but the scores could reflect a verbal LD or AD/HD. Giftedness is best determined by the first two tests -- Verbal Comprehension and Perceptional Reasoning, especially VC. Your son scored low on PR, which suggests he has difficulty with visual processing-- this is not a big weakness in school, which emphasizes verbal/auditory learning, but might affect performance in higher math, such as geometry and calculus. It is unusual to have such a large difference between verbal and perceptual scores. You need expert advice! But the good news is your son is very bright and will do well as soon as he understands and learns to compensate for his relative weaknesses.

I'm not sure that you can diagnose a learning disability based upon IQ score spreads. The two deviation discrepency that is used to dx a LD is when you have two SDs between ability and achievement, not various ability subtests. That is not the say that the OP's child isn't 2E. He may be, but I don't believe you can say for sure based upon IQ spread.

Anecdotally, both of my kids have some significant spread on IQ tests. One of my girls may be 2E although I have had two psychologists assure me that she is not. She is the one with the more significant variations in IQ like the OP's. The second of my girls also has one low avg subtest on the WISC and three gifted subtests. Even within those gifted subtests (those that came out in the upper 90s total), her scores varied from the 25th to 99.9th percentile. I am as certain as I can possibly be that she is not 2E however.

eta: This article on best practices in identification of gifted students with learning disabilities might be useful to see if 2E is something to consider.

Hmm, Cricket2, I understood this differently. My D15 has been diagnosed with a non-verbal learning disability, and the diagnosis is based partially on large discrepancies between some of the verbal and non-verbal subtests on the WISC-IV. I am not at home and don't have the details in front of me, but my understanding from the psychiatrist who administered and interpreted the results for us was that in that particular case, the discrepancy in scores is a strong indicator of that type of learning disability.

I, too, was told by a GT expert at a location I won't identify that dd9 likely had ADHD and dyslexia based upon her IQ subtest spread. I was then told by two other psychologists that she absolutely did not based upon other measures. There seems to be a lot of disagreement among experts about using IQ spread to dx LDs or anything. When I did some research, it does appear to be a nebulous science to attempt to dx anything based upon IQ profiles.

The article I linked above cautions strongly against "profile analysis." Scroll down to page 407 to see their thoughts on it.

Our tester(s) (actually this info was provided by two different psychiatrists/clinics several years apart) only discussed the non-verbal learning disability related to the gap in scores. D had separate tests (not IQ) for ADHD (which were inconclusive both times). In our case, they made no representation regarding ADHD related to the IQ scores/subtests. Most of the research I have done since then on non-verbal learning disabilities does cite the gap in WISC verbal and non-verbal scores as a major indicator of this disability.