Ah, having just "lurked" a psych discussion about whether to give 1 point or 2 on a certain WISC-IV vocabulary question.....I rest my (personal, in my own mind) case.

This is all very interesting. My reports are probably squished into a corner of my desk somewhere, as I have taken them apart to copy for DITD and don't think I ever got around to stapling them back together. I was a thinking the other day that I should take more care with them. I have no idea if I ever was given a GAI for oldest ds, and I know they did not give me all the subtest info. My two middle kids do have GAIs well above that 150, so maybe their numbers will change.

I have mixed feelings about this. I agree that it is a nice effort to discern the higher ability kids, but it also further muddies the waters as far as program cut offs and public perception goes. There are so many variables!

What IS the real difference between a subtest score of 18 and a subtest score of 19? Why don't they throw out all the old tests and come up with something new?

As an example of how hard it can be to know what a number means, a couple days ago, someone told me that their daughter had an IQ of 160. I asked her what instrument was used to test her, and the parent didn't actually know! The girl is a young adult now, and was tested before she could read, so it is quite possible that it was the LM. The implication for an SBLM score of 160 is vastly different from the implication of the same score on a Wechsler.

I totally agree Lorel! That reminds me of a discussion I had with the mom of DD11's best friend, back when we were both having our DD's tested for GT. "BF" came to our house one day quite pleased with herself and her 157 score. She was very forthright with that info (one of many reasons why I refuse to give my children actual numbers!)

Knowing we use the WISC-IV for ID purposes, of course I was quite intriqued. This was back when we were first investigating DYS and I was reading up on all these tests. This was a girl too that we've known since age 6, and while I'm sure I "imposter syndromed" her out of GT with my girls, I couldn't begin to place her in the PG crowd. She is very much like my girls, and in hindsight very solidy GT.

Of course I was curious, and did question her mom...

Me: "BF was quoting quite the high IQ the other day"
BFmom: "Yes, it's 157, can you believe it?"
Me: "Wow, you might have some school issues on your hands, was that on the WISC-IV?"
BFmom: "Yes"

I watched this kid VERY closely for weeks afterward, and couldn't make any sense of it. Later I overheard her talking with another mom about a big "discrepancy" between scores. I'm quite certain in hindsight that her 157 was on the Slosson screener, that in the hands of an inexperienced school counselor has been known to overinflate (most of 70 or so 130+ scores did not test 130 on the WISC, including at least one score in the 150's!) I can only guess her WISC was more "down to earth" gifted.

Anyway...I digress. This mom was not boasting, inflating, or anything, she was sincerely confused. But yes, the waters are quite muddied at this point!!!! If the experts can't grasp the significance of the differences, surely the general population (including school staff!) doesn't stand a chance!

LOL, and if we armchair psychs are confused, the average layperson doesn't have a chance! Never mind apples to apples, we can't even talk apples to kumquats or bananas to passionfruit!

I am looking at page one of the technical report. It looks like this boy had a full scale IQ of 158 with GAI of 160, and they changed these to 192 full scale and 208 GAI. I'm curious as to whether they are trying to make the scores line up with the old SBLM. I haven't looked through the whole report yet- do they include any data from the LM? I know that Linda Silverman likes the LM and I believe this boy came from her data. If I use my son's GAI (I still haven't looked for the subtest pages) and assume that it will change according to the table on page 16, then his new extended score is just a handful of points lower than his LM score.

I told ds 11 his score a few years ago when he asked. Previously, I'd drawn a bell curve and explained where he is on that. We talked about different tests measuring slightly different skills and the idea of a test score being just a snapshot of performance on a given day. He would never talk about this stuff with his friends. DD hasn't really been curious yet, though of course she was aware that she scored high enough for DITD.

Blah... have to go wash the dishes! Hey, BTW, I am deep cleaning the house for my Bright Minds Party on Monday night. If anyone wants to order (they do all those cool critical thinking workbooks, Greek and Latin roots, and more, for preschool through high school) please send me a pm with your email. I can send you to my Bright Minds rep's web site, and you can mention that it's for my party. I'll pick up your shipping costs.

Shameless, I know, but I am starting to get desperate! I have only two confirmed guests and a handful of maybes. I never should have planned this for the winter- nobody wants to go out at night! I really love the products though, and my kids do too.

Look at the page before that Lorel, I got the impression that "K.O." was a hypothetical kid, to show you how the scores could be reported. On the previous page, it says the highest extended FSIQ (of the 153 new kids) is only 159 (not 192!) The highest GAI extended score was 176, which may or may not be the same child.

I know this is controversial, but I still think the SB-LM extension scoring (beyond the regular norms that only go up to about 164) is best explained by ratio logic. This WISC extension supposedly still uses a deviation logic, and they don't expect many kids to hit those 180+ scores at all.

The report is actually a very quick read...most of it is the new tables. It's about a page and a half of text at most.

I wish I could actually COME to your party!!!! Sounds fun!

I keep peeking back, hoping for more.....this was one of my favorite types of discussions, LOL! Where's CFK and her intervention!!!!

Dottie,
Time to go brew a nice cup of herbal tea, find a quiet spot (I know 3 kids...) and read anything not related to gifted, education or legislation for at least 30 minutes.

Yum, sounds good.....but can I please read my assessment book instead?

Hi, Dottie,

I know you love this stuff, and I've been busy and away from the action over here. So I looked at the report and I have all the raw and scaled scores for DS. The thing is, I don't know which ones to include in any recalculation. For instance, there are subtests in parentheses. I know those are optional. Do they go into the calculation? (information and word reasoning in vci and picture completion in PRI)

I know they don't go into the calculation of the GAI - that's just the sum of similarities, vocabulary, comprehension, block design (just one of the two, right?), picutre concepts and matrix reasoning. I don't think DS's score will move, but it's fun playing the game.

Thanks!

With 19's, things might very well move! Lucky you with those raw scores. The GAI would only move if the subtest scores move, unless the original subtest total was 100 or higher (the tables for 100+ are slightly different regardless of any subtest movement).

So figure out if any of his 19 subtests changed first, based on the age appropriate chart. Then IF they have changed, you get to figure out new index scores, new GAI scores AND a new full scale! I'm drooling at the thought.

I'd have fun checking out the optional subtests too, but no....they don't count for anything.

The main subtests are similarities, vocabulary and comprehension for VCI, and block design, picture concepts and matrix reasoning for PRI.

Have fun! If you get stuck, shoot me a PM with the raw score data.