Verbal IQ & Peformance IQ?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My child-- tested at age 3-- had a 49 percentage point gap between verbal and performance! She was at 99 % on verbal, 50% on performance. She is very obviously a bright child, though, and nothing indicated anything more than unreliablility of WPPSI's for 3 year olds. (My dad is a psychologist with a practice heavy in education assessments and he says the tests are nearly worthless for children under 6-- scores are extremely unstable over time). We did not apply to the big 3 but we applied and she as accepted at 3 excellent area private schools.

What does the disparity suggest for success at school? In other words, is the suggestion that your child will do poorly in math or science or art?

[Anonymous]

Slightly OT but, does anyone have any insight into what could be the cause of or help mitigate or shore up a 64 percentage point discrepancy btwn. processing speed and verbal scale? (verbal being the higher one) I'm thinking it indicates a possible learning problem and am trying to figure out if I can pinpoint anything to help with that. Resource recs. or other options would be great. TIA!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My child-- tested at age 3-- had a 49 percentage point gap between verbal and performance! She was at 99 % on verbal, 50% on performance. She is very obviously a bright child, though, and nothing indicated anything more than unreliablility of WPPSI's for 3 year olds. (My dad is a psychologist with a practice heavy in education assessments and he says the tests are nearly worthless for children under 6-- scores are extremely unstable over time). We did not apply to the big 3 but we applied and she as accepted at 3 excellent area private schools.

What does the disparity suggest for success at school? In other words, is the suggestion that your child will do poorly in math or science or art?

According to my dad the educational psychologist, the disparity-- for a child tested at age 3 1/2-- suggests nothing whatsoever. He refuses to administer these tests to children under 6 because he considers them too unreliable. (And for what it's worth, my older child, tested at 3, got an overall WPPSI score that was around 80%-- then, tested again at 5, she got an overall score in the 98th percentile. So either her "innate" abilities changed-- um, no-- or the testing is unreliable. My father also comments that the skills and techniques of the tester have an enormous impact on scores for very young children, both in the sense that little tots will often underperform if they are intimidated, and in the sense that the scoring itself is quite subjective for the WPPSI-- there is often not a "right" answer, and the scorer has to decide if a child looking at a picture of a tree who says, "maple!" instead of tree is a) brilliant (he took a reasonable guess and tried to identify the kind of tree!, b) stupid (what's wrong with this kid? why can't he just say a tree is a tree?), c) correct and this is not unusual -- "maple" counts as "tree" -- or d) has vision problems or attention problems and can perfectly well identify a tree as a tree, but couldn't see the picture, or didn't really look because he was too busy checking out the interesting poster on the wall.

Unless the scores track your own sense that your child is stronger in some areas than in others (which is also not that strange, and can change over time), don't worry about it. Schools know perfectly well that these scores say very little-- but it's a convenient, if rather aribitrary, way to make hard decisions and come up with a seemingly "objective" reason to justify and admissions decision.

[Anonymous]

Our child had a 30 point discrepancy at age 4, and at age 8 , an even larger 50 plus point discrepancy between processing and verbal scores. I agree with the poster that suggested that the reason schools may shy away from admitting young kids with such a large gap is the school's fear of the unknown - and not wanting to risk a bad fit for the child later. That said, my suggestion to the OP is not to dwell on the test or what it may or may not mean - doing so at this point is pointless, and only time will tell if there are things to be concerned about. The good news is - you will be watchful and ready if challenges arise. For now, believe that your child can do anything - and if they need extra help, work with the school to understand what they need and make it happen (in our case OT for writing/sensory stuff was necessary - but we had to pay for it because DC did not qualify for these services at our public school....). Our educational journey has been different than I anticipated, but I can honestly say that everything has worked out better then it ever would have if DC had gone to the school I had my heart set on for K. Learning differences can be a blessing in disguise if you accept them and find the right environment for your child. Just to clarify some of the misconceptions about "gaps" in testing, our child does not have a learning disability or ADHD (surprisingly), but DC definitely has a specific and unique learning style that was red-flagged by the tests he took when he was 4. I never believed them (and I loathed them) but I never forgot them either. (oh - for the record, we successfully transferred to private in 4th grade and were accepted at both schools where we applied).

[Anonymous]

what individual subtest scores do the schools see??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:what individual subtest scores do the schools see??

All. A report will include a brief narrative (how child behaved), all subtest scores, all summary scores (except, possibly, Full Scale IQ if there were a lot of discrepencies), and some description of what each test means. You can't cherry-pick the scores, and if you did a school would likely assume the worst!

[Anonymous]

can you contest test results? the test administrator i think really screwed up and made my child nervous.

[Anonymous]

Yes and no. Whether the report is sent to the schools is entirely up to you; you can refuse to give/rescind your permission. Some schools require that you let them know when the testing is scheduled, though, so they'll know something is up. You can send the report, but also send a note explaining why you feel the test wasn't valid. You can't retest with the WPPSI for a year, but you can arrange for your child to be tested on a different IQ test - the Stanford-Binet and the Differential Abilities Scale (DAS) are well-respected - and you can send those scores as well. If your child was tested by someone in a large group practice, you can talk to the practice manager about what happened - that may or may not help. You can also read the report carefully when it is done, and make sure there are no egregious errors (miscalculating the child's age, for example). Some testers will also at least listen to suggestions for changes in the narrative of the report - like having it say that, because the child was very anxious, the scores may underrepresent her true ability. Of course, the tester would have to agree with you on that one!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:can you contest test results? the test administrator i think really screwed up and made my child nervous.

Ask the tester not to send the scores until you read the report. The narrative part of the report should give you some indication of whether your child was nervous or not (i.e., separated easily from parent, was eager to answer questions, was focused on tasks, etc.) If the narrative describes your child's behavior in a "normal" fashion, then probably there is nothing to contest -- even if the scores aren't good. If the narrative states that your child appeared sleepy/tired, uninterested, anxious, etc. then probably you can speak to the tester about the results. But even in the later case, the tester is likely to state in the narrative whether s/he thinks the scores are an accurate reflection of your child's IQ.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My child-- tested at age 3-- had a 49 percentage point gap between verbal and performance! She was at 99 % on verbal, 50% on performance. She is very obviously a bright child, though, and nothing indicated anything more than unreliablility of WPPSI's for 3 year olds. (My dad is a psychologist with a practice heavy in education assessments and he says the tests are nearly worthless for children under 6-- scores are extremely unstable over time). We did not apply to the big 3 but we applied and she as accepted at 3 excellent area private schools.

This is how my ds scores--like 68% on performance (due to screwing up on one test) and 98% verbal.

[Anonymous]

are you telling me that all nw dc children are getting fiq of 99%???? seriously or just a few? how can that be?

[Anonymous]

Not all, of course, but think for a minute about the statistics. 99%ile means your score is 1 in 100 for the entire population. But the population of applicants to private schools is likely to skew high, for a variety of reasons. In addition, the WPPSI is relatively more sensative to an enriched background than IQ tests at older ages. Put those two factors together and a higher percentage of kids than 1 in 100 will score very well. Add to that that parents are going to refer to their kid as 99% if they reached that level on the Verbal, Performance, or Full Scales, not necessarily on all three, and you have a larger-than-expected group at the 99%.

The same thing happens for older kids on the SSAT, although 99% is still pretty rare. You get two scores back - child compared to a national sample and child compared to other applicants to independent schools. A kid at the 95%ile nationally might only be at the 70%ile for private school kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not all, of course, but think for a minute about the statistics. 99%ile means your score is 1 in 100 for the entire population. But the population of applicants to private schools is likely to skew high, for a variety of reasons. In addition, the WPPSI is relatively more sensative to an enriched background than IQ tests at older ages. Put those two factors together and a higher percentage of kids than 1 in 100 will score very well. Add to that that parents are going to refer to their kid as 99% if they reached that level on the Verbal, Performance, or Full Scales, not necessarily on all three, and you have a larger-than-expected group at the 99%.

The same thing happens for older kids on the SSAT, although 99% is still pretty rare. You get two scores back - child compared to a national sample and child compared to other applicants to independent schools. A kid at the 95%ile nationally might only be at the 70%ile for private school kids.

You're posting the same messages on several threads right now. I'm very curious about what makes you an expert on this - I really question how many children in this area are scoring 99+ on Full Scale IQ. I questioned you on the other thread too because most independent school children I know scored in the high eighties and low nineties -

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
You're posting the same messages on several threads right now. I'm very curious about what makes you an expert on this - I really question how many children in this area are scoring 99+ on Full Scale IQ. I questioned you on the other thread too because most independent school children I know scored in the high eighties and low nineties -

Maybe this is because the schools aren't accepting the 99+ kids! Mostly just kidding, though some of us with kids in this position do wonder if the scores actually harmed the kids' chances. (I'm not sure how many of us there actually are--maybe it's just a few of us griping over and over--but it has come up many times on this board.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not all, of course, but think for a minute about the statistics. 99%ile means your score is 1 in 100 for the entire population. But the population of applicants to private schools is likely to skew high, for a variety of reasons. In addition, the WPPSI is relatively more sensative to an enriched background than IQ tests at older ages. Put those two factors together and a higher percentage of kids than 1 in 100 will score very well. Add to that that parents are going to refer to their kid as 99% if they reached that level on the Verbal, Performance, or Full Scales, not necessarily on all three, and you have a larger-than-expected group at the 99%.

The same thing happens for older kids on the SSAT, although 99% is still pretty rare. You get two scores back - child compared to a national sample and child compared to other applicants to independent schools. A kid at the 95%ile nationally might only be at the 70%ile for private school kids.

You're posting the same messages on several threads right now. I'm very curious about what makes you an expert on this - I really question how many children in this area are scoring 99+ on Full Scale IQ. I questioned you on the other thread too because most independent school children I know scored in the high eighties and low nineties -

Different poster here. I don't think PP claimed to be an expert. Neither am I. But as I stated on another thread, I do know about a dozen kids who scored 99% FSIQ.