Psychometric Testing

[beccaboo]

Just wondering what other people's experience of this has been? Ds, age 3 years, 2 months, did the Wechsler Pre-school test this week. We don't know the results yet, but I sat in the corner of the room to observe, and I was quite surprised.

He did OK on the receptive/expressive language parts I think - I had my reservations about this prior to the test, it seems odd to test the IQ of a child with a language delay by testing their language?!!

The psych said he did very well on the blocks section - where he had to copy patterns that she made with little red and white cubes.

The thing that really stunned me was the puzzle section. I had expected him to be OK at this, but he was completely hopeless. I think he only got one or two right. With the rest of them, he just pushed the pieces together in a haphazard way and said 'finished!'

Her instruction to him was 'put the pieces together'. Maybe he took her literally, and didn't realise he was supposed to make a picture. But my instinct is that he didn't understand that they were parts of a whole - it really shook me. Has anyone else encountered this? Is it a typical autistic thing?

My son did a Wechsler at age 4.

He did not do the puzzle part of the test so I can't help there.

On the block test he scored 2 as he would not allow different colour blocks to be put together.

Re the IQ tests. I don't really know if they are that meaningful. We got a verbal score, a nonverbal score and an overall IQ. It did seem to match the level we thought he was at. His non verbal IQ was much higher than his verbal about 20 points difference.

I think an autistic child doesn't always see things as a whole, but picks out certain parts of a picture, my ds certainly does this. I can't comment on the Wechsler test but my ds had the Leiter psychometric test when he was 3 1/2 years, and from this his mental age was estimated at the time at 2 1/2 years. I too was surprised at his difficulties with some of the tests, which involved different coloured blocks, but according to report he seemed to struggle with some of the easier items, and yet succeed with the harder ones. Apparently this is quite common with autistic children as they have difficulty adapting their ideas once they had started a particular strategy. I remember coming out of the room feeling thoroughly disappointed with his reults so do I understand what you're feeling.