Bemused by DD’s assessment result

[Cuppatea14]

We took our DD for an educational assessment to try to figure out why she’s struggling with her spelling. The school were at a loss because she reads well ahead of her age, so she doesn’t present as dyslexic.

Anyway, we got the report today and it confirms that she’s definitely not dyslexic, but does identify her as on the ‘extremely high range of ability’ (with a score of 150 on the Wechsler scale, if that means anything to anyone?)

Very nice to have someone confirm our kid is bright but we are still none the wiser about why she cannot spell? She also struggles with things like remembering months of the year in the correct order, and is generally what in the 90’s we would have called ‘a bit of a ditz’. So we are amused by her results and clueless as to what to do next. Anyone any insights?

We will have a follow up with the psychologist in a few weeks time, curious to hear if anyone has pointers on what we should ask.

I was diagnosed as dyslexic in the 1980s. I strongly suspect that I’m not. I read quickly and had a high reading age. In my teens I struggled to read a whole book often skipping words and paragraphs. my brain was very very quick and impulsive and wanted the ‘end of the book’. I can read two types of material

1. dull scientific papers (to anyone else but interesting to me) that I pull apart, highlight and retain. I love maths books
2. I hate the expression but chick lit - my brain doesn’t have to focus at all

I’m ADHD

My son has SALT needs and spelling was his Mr Evil he just couldn’t do it. Phonetics took years and eventually aged 10 he learnt the year 3/4 spellings by sheer blood and tears - (mine. 😆)

He’s now doing spelling for 5/6 to earn a bike. He has found he can’t retain them so needs to do it daily and is still going over the others he’s now 11. He will have mastered them all by secondary.

Get the kit/ kip spelling book year 1-6 and start at the beginning. Then move up levels. So start with ‘sit’ pre year 1 words to build confidence.

it’s here https://amzn.eu/d/g6HhudU

then move to the tricky words which are not phonetic - we looked at all the different flash cards we found loads of different cards and looked into them (cgp etc) but found the images on the foxton ones much better

https://amzn.eu/d/eC7NDrV

we break them all down over and over eg island was ‘is’ ‘land’
we used drama eg he was on a boat acted out what do you see? Is…. Land ahead and so on.

Imagine was I’m a gin (with magic e) - we made him his own gin (not really) in the gin glass with a letter E stuck on etc

And so on. Spelling is one small part of her. My son went from 3 years behind in spellings next to his peers to to fact he is scoring 100 in year 6 sats but we are still looking to support him as it’s a life long skill

Hello. My son and I both have very similar profiles (although skewed lower overall I think processing ends up as low average). We both have ADHD. I also have terrible spelling and attention to detail, struggle with telling the time and my left and right, and don't really know my times tables despite having an A at Further Maths A levels and a first from a top university in a very mathematical degree (much of this is likely linked to my autism rather than ADHD and my won doesn't really struggle with this).

From the profile and what you've said in your post, I would test for ADHD.

(But also that 150 is really odd when none of the individual scores were that high. I would question the test!).

You might want a second opinion on dyslexia? My DS could read at 3 and following assessment at around 9 (in hospital setting) was diagnosed with dyslexia. Psychologist did say they did way more tests than would normally be done and even involved a neurologist. They also said very high IQ (top 3 percent of pop). I have always thought ADHD and ADD might be a factor too. Apparently they present very similar way.

(And technically they shouldn't have given you an FSIQ anyway with that level of discrepancy between scores I think, but that doesn't really matter!)

ADD is a form of ADHD.

Hi waryclam
The full scale score is higher than the contributory scores because of regression to the mean. This is where at a population level most people will tend to have scores that cluster at mean, or at least some scores that do. Where a person's scores are all skewed either sig above or below the mean, the full scale score is pulled to a more extreme figure as it's rarer for a person who has had 10 goes at getting an average score in a subtest to have 10 times presented at an extreme or high (or very low) score. It's odd that as a mathematician you aren't familiar with that in statistical analysis?

Also in Wisc 5 a FSIQ is recommended to be calculated regardless of discrepancies, but discrepancies should be explained.

Hey, try searching 'is dyslexia real?' I've just gone down this rabbit hole (as someone dianosed as a young adult, 10 years ago) There's a great guardian article and an in depth peice as well. Something about Staffordshire council. There's an argument that dyslexia is too broad, changed over time and it's now known IQ is completely unrelated to reading skills, and theres been no neurological basis for dyslexia. So many children are dyslexic, schools should adjust for all poor readers, no one strategy works best for people with dyslexia, Vs a child struggling at school. It's not changed because money can be made in diagnosis. So by diagnosing more children, the middle class with pusher parents and ones able to afford a private assessment, will get better education than the poorer people.

I never said I was a mathematician or even suggested I was! I do get the concept of regression to the mean and you could simply have said that was the reason (although it's not the full reason given that only 7 of the subtests are used for to calculate FSIQ and for the OP's DC each of the three sub-tests not included for FSIQ were the lowest sub-test in that cluster so pulling the cluster score down).

I accept I got this wrong but I'm not clear what drove your extreme reaction, particularly given that this is a peculiarity of WISC-V. FSIQ isn't always calculated in this way. You're clearly an expert and so may say I'm wrong but from what I can see with WAIS-IV for example it wouldn't be possible to come out with a 150 if none of the index scores had been above 150.

I was wrong on the spiky profile and WISC-V. I see now that's an outdated approach and was more associated with WISC-IV.

I wasn't having an extreme reaction, sorry if it came across that way. Just explaining regression to the mean to anyone reading the thread - it is either not explained at all or only very badly on most psychology training courses - but I thought would be better covered in maths, which I didn't do, hence me expressing surprise.

I, too, was caught out by changes from wisc iv to v and calculation of FSIQ, which is how I know about it!

She's very close in both ability level and spiky profile to my DD. FWIW we were told that Matrix Reasoning and Vocab were the best indicators of ability overall - I think this is particularly true for your DD as she's not even taught in English. So she is very bright.

I would very much second the idea of looking at behavioural optometry - this made a huge difference to us (it turns out that one of the reasons DD did not have dyslexia was because she does not have 3-D vision, which ironically helped).

But the not remembering stuff does sound very much like ADHD and I think it is worth pursuing that as well. Medication made a huge difference during secondary; growing up has also helped enormously as well.

In my experience, this kind of ability is part of a broader ND universe, and at this level almost always comes with something like dyslexia or ADHD or ASD. I thought for many years DD was unusual and then she got the diagnosis (and so did I in her slipstream).

Also, I don't know the new test as well, but with DD, her scores of 19 meant that she'd hit the top ceiling of the test, and so was probably more able than it could measure.

The diagnosis always used to be dyslexia if the child has a “spiked” profile e.g. much better in some aspects than others. So I am very surprised they didn’t diagnose her.

My dd could read but not spell for toffee, certainly not toffee its self! She got a dyslexia diagnosis (through state ed psych) at 7. She’s gifted at maths particularly but has slow brain processing and issues with spelling despite a masters and does one of those jobs that people cite to describe someone clever! She got 25% extra time in exams which is honoured in professional exams too

Thanks and also sorry for misinterpreting!

I did economics not maths after school (but that was a long time ago and I'm now a lawyer where even knowing what a confidence interval is tends to be considered some Einstein level ability at maths). Economics has a lot of stats but I don't think this type of concept would be something that was really looked at because economics stats are more about determining the extent to which sample results can be applied to a larger population (and trying to determine correlations between data points). I am surprised it's not better covered in psychology though as it does seem to be something fundamentally important to understanding this area in particular.

This one is pure anecdotal but I do find it interesting in this context - DS was tested way before me and came out as way way ahead on WIAT compared to WISC-V (FSIQ 119 but WIAT-III Total achievement was 136) and none of the professionals I spoke to were interesting in engaging with me on what was going on (and I couldn't find anything online). He's also always scored relatively badly on CAT-4s compared to his actual results and GL testing. When I did my own testing, I realized just how much my ADHD was impacting some of my scorings on the WAIS-IV - I actually felt myself drifting off into lala land if I couldn't answer a question in 5 seconds. I reckon that the pure play IQ tests can underscore sometimes for people with ADHD because there's not enough of a hook in the question to keep them engaged and concentrating on it. It's the complete opposite though of the 'norm' which is that neurodivergent people normally underperform on the more knowledge based tests!

That was to @DrRuthGalloway

People have been saying that to me my whole life and yes as an adult I found out I had ADHD

I am a doctoral candidate who is dyslexic. I am considered to have advanced language and vocabulary skills. However, I struggle with spelling and processing at times. There are times I cannot grasp how a simple word is spelt and words can look incorrect. It could be worth considering an Irlen Syndrome test for visual disturbance and letters/words moving. You can have Irlens without dyslexia although is found as a co-condition in dyslexia.

It sounds like your daughter has Irlen syndrome. You can use overlays to assist and it easier to access coloured lenses theses days.

I forgot to add similar to others that have posted I am Autistic. I also cannot do the alphabet without starting at A until I reach the letter I want. I literally have posters on the wall with the alphabet in my office.

I can start at L as well because of the 'lmnop' in the song :)

I intuitively could tell you G was higher in the alphabet than Y, but give me T and S and I'd have to go through the song in my head.

My DS has dysgraphia - sorted by using a laptop so that's another thing to try.
He also has Irlen syndrome - so not dyslexia but difficulty in processing the white spaces between words - an overlay/different coloured paper helps with that.
He's super smart but his school were clueless.

The score makes sense. Most people who are high in some categories are lower in others. So being very high in virtually all of them is very very rare, hence why the overall IQ is higher than the individual scores.

I agree it's not as big a discrepancy actually as my son and I when I look at it again.

Over two standard deviations (which I think this is) isn't normal though, and particularly when it's processing speed it will be bringing all of the other scores down because it's fundamental to any timed test.I think many of the tests on WISC-V and WIAT are timed, but I can't remember.

But also - OP your child is very very very bright whichever way you mix this*, and it looks like they're under performing academically. There could be lots of reasons for this (and the Irish is likely part of it as on the WIAT they're being compared to a cohort of students educated in English - your child will always be behind a similar child educated in English on WIAT), but I would look into SEN in detail. Knowing about an area where a child needs extra support early means you can help them work out coping mechanisms and the earlier you start the more of a blank slate you'll be starting from.

There's also a school of thought that just bring this bright should be looked at as needing extra support - your child is likely miles ahead of his peers in terms of understanding and that can make social interactions difficult.

*This is Mumsnet and people have a habit of saying 'What your child is reading Harry Potter at 5? That's low average, mine read Dickens in their cradle'. No one here has even tried any of that 🤣

With regards to the spelling. I can tell you my personal experience.

I read very well as child with a consistent reading age of around 3-4 years higher than my actual age (tested from the year 3 onwards). I had extreme difficulty in spelling, mostly in ordering the letters. I could not do any anagrams to save my life. I had 3 rounds of dyslexia testing - first in infants, then juniors then secondary school. I was never diagnosed as dyslexic but I clearly have a "processing" problem, it was just not showing up on the dyslexia test. At the time, I was not sent for further OT or SALT testing which I think would have helped. As an adult I was told that I was not eligible on the NHS for further assessment because I was functional...

I highly recommend you ask the psychologist to recommend further testing.

I am not an expert on dyslexia but I can explain WISC score and IQ tests in general for children. I would not read anything into the actual WISC score. Be confident that your DD is doing well academically.

The most important thing to know about IQ tests is that all scores are normalised (i.e. they are not raw performance scores) to provide a normal distribution (the bell curve). The actual IQ score you get depends heavily on the sample of people used for the normalisation i.e. the people you are being compared to.

WISC is age-normalised and demographically-normalised. This means your child's raw score is compared to the raw score of another group of children with the same age that demographically match the UK's general population in terms of 2011 UK Census on gender, ethnicity, parental education, and geographic region.

WISC-V UK version suffers from a really big problem in that it's sample size for normalization is 415 children age from 6-16 (data collection done in 2015) - seperated into 11 equal age "bands" . Your DD's raw score is then compared only to children in the same age "band" i.e. she is only being compared to a sample of ~38 other children.

Statistically speaking this is bascially meaningless because 38 children cannot represent the spread of IQ of all 10 year olds in the UK population. Therefore it is not possible to get an accurate normalized IQ score that is comparable to the 10 year old UK population as whole. A score of 150 can only tell you that DD has a higher IQ score than 99% of the 38 other children they tested.

Even if say you lived in the US and used the US WISC-V where they have a total sample of 2200, with about 200 in each age band, this again cannot represent the millions of 10 year old American children.

IQ tests in children do not correlate well in absolute terms with adult IQ, or the genetic component of intelligence. You will see a lot of people quoting the misnomer that IQ says constant throughout your life. This is completely untrue. IQ is the most stable of the psychometric traits we can measure, but this is comparing IQ to things like self-reported personality.

Putting aside inbuilt error, testing bias, mis-testing and other technical problems with IQ tests, longitudinal studies have shown only a moderate correlation between IQ at age 10-11 and in adulthood (r=0.6). For children with extremely high IQ scores - significant regression to the mean occurs in adulthood in longitudinal studies. If any one is interested I can provide references.