Looking for explanation of what Visual-auditory learning subtest means. What a poor score on this means in the real world, and academically, and what kind of instruction might help.
Re: Important: WJ-3-Interpretation
Robin, thanks for your input. Interesting, but my child does not fit what you described above. He is an excellent speller, never has had problems learning math facts, and learned his letters early. He is now 14. He does have reading comprehension problems and this auditory visual test is what turned up as a deficit. Do you or does anyone else have any info on how this associates w reading, is the test result wrong if math and spelling are not problems, and is this something that can be worked with, to improve on, if this is a problem? Thank you so much for your explanations. It is very helpful.
Re: Important: WJ-3-Interpretation
Well, it doesn’t load very heavily into reading comprehension at his age- that is more closely tied to reasoning skills and vocabulary levels. And there isn’t any reason to think that it is wrong either based on what you have shared. It sounds as if he has compensated quite nicely for what could have been a problem when he was younger. Good for him!
I cannot really speculate effectively on what might be getting in the way of his comprehension since I don’t have all the clinical information I would have if I had tested him. Did the evaluator have any thoughts? One possibility might be in his ability to use syntax and semantic clues in text- there is a fair amount of that in the Visual Auditory Learning test available as cues. The evaluator would tease that out by looking at the sorts of errors he made- as the symbols represent different parts of speech combined into meaningful units- cowboy and dog, the green tree, Bob and Jeff are not in the house- and if he wasn’t attending to the syntax, some of the symbols are visually close enough that it is possible for errors to be made that way. This is all speculation on my part however. Was any speech and language testing done? That might be informative. The Test of Written Language 3 also has a pretty extensive section dealing with syntax use.
Robin
Might have hit the nail on the head!
Robin,
There is some sort of problem in extracting meaning used in context. Vocabulary in terms of definitions, and finding synonyms is fine. Have not had an appointment with the evaluator yet to go over the results yet, since I asked to read it at home first. Thanks again.
How might a language eval. help him at his age?
CC
Re: Might have hit the nail on the head!
A speech and language eval would focus in on his understanding of things like multiple meaning words and complex sentence structures. He is at an age where this can be a big issue anyway, especially when he is reading textbook stuff. One of the thingss that happens as kids move into upper level reading is that the vocabulary becomes more advanced in a hurry, and the sentences in the textbooks become much longer, with more clauses. For a child with weaknesses in language flexibility and understanding- even really mild ones- this can become a real hurdle. My daughter who is 16 now, and not LD, ran face first into this when she was asked to read The Scarlet Letter this summer for her American Lit class. She is a reasonably bright child and an excellent and omnivorous reader who hasn’t needed homework assistance in a loooong time. However,I had to read the first half of the book with her- the jump in language usage (structure and vocab- Hawthorne was either a pompous man or he really worked at making people think he was) meant that she needed to be able to talk it out to understand the chapters before she wrote her response.
A language eval will zero in on those sorts of things a bit more specifically than any cognitive assessment is able to do. He may not produce the sorts of responses that indicate a significant problem- but you would at least have some additional detail on the types of things that are harder for him.
However, this is all pending your conversation with the psyche and whatever interpretive information he gives you. I may be completely out in left field here - I didn’t do the testing and I don’t have all the other scores and observations that contribute to thise judgement calls. Take care and I am glad this was a little helpful:)
Robin
Visual auditory learning measures associative learning- the ability to make connections between information that you see and hear and to store it effectively. Math facts would be a good example of something you learn through association. It is a fairly narrow sort of ability, and is easy to accommodate by keeping some limits on how many associations you require at one time, and making sure that they are clearly understood. The test itself asks kids to associate an abstract symbol (a line drawing) with a word such as cowboy or dog. After the association is presented, they need to read it back, along with other symbol/spoken word associations. Some of them are pretty concrete- dog, house tree- and some a little mare abstract- Bob, Jeff,under, is, over, by- and context helps a lot.
In the real world- letter names might come a little slower, math facts and spelling words later on. It’s impact is usually a little greater with younger students, but even then, it is typically not enormous- it is only one subtest, in one cluster after all, and should be considered in the light of the rest of the clusters and the patterns they present.
Robin