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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Are there ways to get kids ready for a WISC? Not "prep" but more just to make sure they don't do poorly bc they have never been exposed to such questions? Is it much like the CogAT?[/quote]

Yes, there are companies that sell prep materials. If you’re curious about your child’s actual IQ, prepping will give you an inflated number. So it won’t be “real.” Most people don’t prep for the WISC, and so your child’s results will be compared to children who were never exposed to those questions.

If your goal, however, is solely to get a high number so that you can reject an appeal, you should be able to find prep materials to preview by running a search.[/quote]

My goal is to get a score that reflects DC's ability. [b]I know that going into tests completely cold can disadvantage a test taker so that their score is less reflective of ability[/b]. That's my concern. I'm not curious about DC's IQ and wouldn't have them take the test if it wasn't something that could be useful for AAP admission.[/quote]

This is not the case with IQ tests. You’re supposed to go in cold to get a score that accurately reflects ability. Most people do not prep for a WISC. [/quote]

Isn't the CogAT an IQ test? It's obvious to me that there are some ways that children can err because they are not savvy test takers, which has nothing to do with IQ per se. How is the WISC so different? 
 [/quote]
CogAT is not an IQ test.  It's considered an ability test.  It's easy to prep for since there are fewer domains and the test is purely multiple choice with no interactions with anyone or need to justify any answers.  The ceiling for the CogAT is pretty low, and at the top end, there's a huge gap in score between the kid who got everything right (perhaps with a lucky guess) and the kid who got one problem wrong (same ability, but not so lucky).

The WISC is one-on-one with a psychologist, where the kids have to explain their answers.  It covers many more domains and gives a much more comprehensive view of the kid.  There isn't as profound of a ceiling effect at the top, and a lucky guess could not drastically improve the score.    [/quote]

You are wrong, it's an intelligence test, as is the NNAT, it's just different in length, number of subsets/domains, and format. Cognitive ability is just another word for intelligence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_Abilities_Test

It's possibly true that WISC is not quite as preppable, but I know from direct experience in educational research that at least one subset is amenable to experience. 
[/quote]

Even the CogAT publisher doesn't claim that the CogAT is an IQ test.  
https://mercerpublishing.com/cogat?srsltid=AfmBOooEFrpBxx1tin7B2eCdv1pEKkkuGHyef0uvwlzo54YdnI_mwyn6#faq

Yes, it measures intelligence.  But it's far too crude of a tool to suggest that any specific CogAT score corresponds to an IQ.  The CogAT ceiling effects are pretty profound and will give very distorted scores.

It's much more preppable than the WISC.  There are vastly fewer domains in the CogAT.  There are many prep materials online and on amazon.  There's no one to check whether the kid seems prepped and invalidate the score if that is the case.  Lucky guessing can make a huge difference at the top tails.  [/quote]

I mean, it was renamed from an intelligence test to a cog ability test. It's marketing. No one said it was a "good" intelligence test. A less comprehensive shorter test will of course be less valid.

Anyway, can you explain what you mean about lucky guessing with a hypothetical example? [/quote]

Not sure what your question is, but here goes.  Kid A and Kid B get everything else right, but are both stumped on problem 30.  Since the test is multiple choice, both make random guesses.  Kid A, who gets the problem right, might end up with say a 152 section score.  Kid B, who gets it wrong, ends up with say a 140.  There really is no difference in ability between the two kids, but by CogAT ceiling scoring, Kid A now has a much higher section score and likely a much higher VQN.  Now throw in kid C, who breezes through everything, finds all questions super easy, but makes a couple careless mistakes.  Kid C is probably getting a 132-135 on that section, even though he would have the highest IQ if measured.

The difference in score between a perfect score and one wrong is huge.  The difference between 1 wrong and 2 wrong is still pretty big.  It's not a problem with the test, but rather a problem with the way people are using and interpreting it.  The CogAT isn't meant to differentiate between a 135 and a 145.  The test ceiling is too low for that.  
[/quote]

This is very helpful, thanks. How did you determine this? By test ceiling you mean the max number of qs the kids have the opportunity to answer?[/quote]
I determined this through the super scientific method of comparing the scores all of my kids.   :D 
It was surprising to me that one kid answered all of the questions correctly and got a 150 on that section, while the other got 3 wrong out of like 60 questions in the same section and ended up with a 130.   Another kid got 4 wrong and still got a 130, but this kid was slightly younger than the other kid with the 130, so they must have been in different norming buckets.  The first kid with the 150 in a section had the same scores in the other two sections as the kid with the 130, but the VQN was 10 points higher.

By test ceiling, I mean the ability of the test to differentiate between kids at the highest ends.  The hardest problems in the CogAT aren't difficult enough to distinguish between a kid at the 99.9th percentile and one at the 98th percentile.  The WISC is designed to have much more ability to differentiate between moderately gifted and highly gifted kids.  [/quote]

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