Delay in Speech Effect IQ?

The WISC does not test reading and math achievement.

IQ is IQ really. Underneath it all is our IQ. What we do with children and for children actualizes that IQ.

Could speech therapy thus help a child to better ‘connect’ and find the real potential they have as a result of their IQ? Of course. Could it or the denial of it affect a child years later as a teenager? Theoretically, yes.

The 4 years gap between this child and their peers in reading and math, however, would be difficult to fully attribute to a lack of speech therapy but I’d need to know much more about this situation before saying more.

But if the child has a language-based disability would he not need therapy in order to make sense of his classroom instruction and those basic math and reading skills?

I would think that if the language-based problems were not identified and addressed, naturally the child would not progress.

Am I way off here?

My error…I apologize about quoting the wrong test name this child took that gave him his low IQ score. Unfortunately I do not have access to his evaluation to tell you which psychological test he did take.

As mentioned before, he did receive speech services from kindergarten till third grade when those services were taken away and the label LD was placed upon him. The year he entered fifth grade the school system also gave him the label of EBD.

I am trying to gather information for a due process hearing to aid this child in an appropriate educational program. I need a better understanding if the lack of speech services would have impacted his lower IQ score. Thanks again!

Please, whatever questions you may have and I can answer; please ask away. I’d love to hear your viewpoint. Thanks!

Hmm. LD shouldn’t take away speech services persay. It could take away language services. What kind of therapy was he receiving exactly? That would need to be my first question.

How old/what grade is the child in now?
When was the last time his IQ was measured? What was the result?

do you want to know if his lack of speech services ‘impacted’ his low IQ or caused his low IQ?

And are you also trying to demonstrate that his poor reading etc. are attributable to his lack of speech services?

About 1/2 of the Wecshler IQ test is language related. Vocabulary, Verbal analogies, Recalling and telling about information, talking about what would be done in certain situations: all these tests require oral language. I’ve seen speech/langauge kids score 30 points lower.

There are tests of IQ for kids who are language impaired or who cannot speak. The C-Toni, The Test of Non-Verbal Intelligence are a couple.

Kids who are more verbal do better in school because of the extra attention (from asking questions, participating in discussions) and feeling of competence academically and socially.

Speech therapy is extremely important. Speech deficients can trigger delays in learning to read, too. Skipping it just isn’t worth it.

All that being said, the WISC doesn’t measure achievement—only IQ. It isn’t a reading test. There is mental math on it but it isn’t a math test, measures ability to process mentally.

IQ (as measured by the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children Third Edition [WISC-III] or any other psychological tool) does not change over time. Therefore, a child’s IQ will not increase or decrease with age and should not be significantly different when they are a teenager.
I think that it is also important to understand what ‘intelligence’ is. Wechsler defines it as the “capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his or her environment”.
Sue is right - a cognitive assessment will not measure reading or math level. However, the WISC-III is an excellent predictor of academic success.
I disagree with Susan. If the Psychologist used a WISC-III to assess your child, they must have deemed it to be the most appropriate measure for him / her. While the child’s Verbal IQ (which does make up half of the testing items although not necesarily half of the Fullscale IQ) reflects their performance on subtests that have a verbal or language component, this does not mean that they need to speak well, they merely have to be able to think using language. The WISC-III manual (p38) clearly states that the assessment can be altered to be used with deaf children utilising sign language.
In Australia, the reason we focus our speech therapy services in schools on children in k-3 is because these children are in a window of opportunity where speech therapy services have a lasting effect. After year 3, students are less likely to make significant or lasting advances.

Actually, IQ is not necessarily static. For example, there is something called the Matthew effect, in which a child who has not received appropriate remediation experiences a drop in his or her IQ. Check out this link for more information:

http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/test.matthew.effect.htm

Andrea

How old/what grade is the child in now?
When was the last time his IQ was measured? What was the result?

Male child — 14.5 yrs. old
IQ was measured last month by school system @ 80 - 95.
Private eval. @ 83.

do you want to know if his lack of speech services ‘impacted’ his low IQ or caused his low IQ?

Yes, I’d like to know if it impacted his low IQ score.

And are you also trying to demonstrate that his poor reading etc. are attributable to his lack of speech services?

Again, yes.

Thanks!

Thank you for the link to Wrightslaw on the Matthew Effect. I had know about M.E. hoping this might be the case for this child, but it seems as though his IQ has stayed the same along with achievement score from when he was first tested years ago. I’m being told that he is a “slow learner” and therefore he really is not entitled to any special education services.

I’m just baffled how a school system can put all sorts of labels on a child and give services (which barely helped — still 4 yrs. behind peers) yet now claim they were doing him a favor by offering him services. Yet they still have him listed as LD/EBD on a recent 3 year eval/IEP.

Guess I am looking for some points that will help this parent win her case at an upcoming due process hearing.

Thanks, again!

Please read this article before proceeding to court
www.nasponline.org/publications/cq283slowlearn.html

Perhaps you misinterpreted my post. I didn’t imply that the ability to pronounce words affects WISC scores, but language ability sure does. Children who are slow to talk often lag in language development because they get less practice in oral communications. Now, some are just language delayed without the speech and WISC may still by affected. A RAN problem will affect WISC scores dramatically, for example.

In recent years, brain researchers have come up with very good evidence that IQ is indeed dynamic. That’s a good thing because I’ve seen too many cases in real life for it not to be so. Many colleagues who see students over a time continuum comment on this phenomenon. Enrich. Enrich. Enrich!

Some kids are just late bloomers, too. Hard to swallow, but becoming more & more evident as the years go by.

Are you saying then that the WISC is not an appropriate tool to measure the IQ of children with mental retardation? Many children with MR have delayed speech and language skills(as is consistent with MR) and the WISC is used in most settings to est. their IQ. I think it is going out on a limb to state that a student’s IQ falls because he/she has been found ineligible for speech services thru the schools.

Curious,

The bottom line here is: is there a discrepancy between ability and achievement?

If the child is working to his potential as mesured by the IQ, then he would not qualify for special ed. When you think about it, 50% of all kids have an IQ below 100. Many will have difficulty in school. What I am unclear on in this particular case is that you said his IQ has remained consistent over the years, yet he once qualified LD and now does not. The only way that could happen is if his achievemnt rose to a level eliminated the needed discrepancy. I do not think you can blame the IQ score on lack of services if his IQ has always been 83. An IQ of 83 will definitely make school challenging, but if the child is acheiving to that level, he would not qualify for special ed.services. I’d suggest tutoring after school. He would probably benefit form Phono-Graphix or one of the Orton-Gillingham reading programs. It might take awhile, but he probably does need this type of intensive intervention. That’s rarely available at school anyway.

Janis

This was posted on another board, but I think it answers your question. It is a quote attributed to Weschler, who, of course, designed the WISC.

Andrea

“He rejected most attempts that I made to add easy or hard items to the WISC-R saying firmly, ‘My scales are meant for people with average or near-average intelligence, clinical patients who score between 70 and 130.’” “They are clinical tests.” When I reminded him that psychologists commonly use his scales for the extremes, and want to make distinctions with the ‘below 70’ and ‘above 130’ groups, he answered, “Then that is their misfortune. It’s not what I tell them to do, and it’s not what a good clinician ought to do. They should know better.” — Intelligent testing with
the WISC-III by Alan S. Kaufman, New York : Wiley, ©1994

SAR wrote:
>
> Are you saying then that the WISC is not an appropriate tool
> to measure the IQ of children with mental retardation?

I am not saying anything of the sort. It is, unfortunately, one of the few tools that we have to measure IQ in anyone. (There is always hope for the future.) I am saying that in some children of “normal” or “potentially normal” intelligence, delayed S/L therapy *may* (and has been observed to) contribute to future negative effect on their IQ test performance on certain subtests. Would this same affect be measured in children w/MR? Perhaps not…the language therapy may not have made a difference since the child is developmentally delayed in most domains. This is an apples/oranges comparison. It isn’t even *always* true in children with normal or potentially normal IQ. We can’t even name all the variables, let alone isolate them.

>Many children with MR have delayed speech and language skills(as
> is consistent with MR) and the WISC is used in most settings
> to est. their IQ.

True, enough…but, again, pears and bananas. Indeed, the human brain is so complex as to defy our simple bottle-necking of ideas.

>I think it is going out on a limb to state
> that a student’s IQ falls because he/she has been found
> ineligible for speech services thru the schools.

I believe that you may be deducing to a conclusion, while I am inferring in a building-block process that this could be true in *some instances*. The deduction requires us to stop the process when something is false one time. In inferential questions demands that we ask: Because we know it is true sometimes, when is it false and when is it true?

In no case am I suggesting that school be required to pick up this tab. It is unproveable in an isolated instance until several years after the fact: some kids’ IQs improve and some don’t. Was it the combination of super-enriched home environment plus language therapy? Without controlled experiments, we don’t know by case studies alone. Lord knows that IDEA is so flimsy as to allow children to wait and fail for a large enough discrepancy—whether it is speech/language for a three-, four-year-old or reading for a six-year-old.

In the case of my own child—and parents I know personally not through school—I tell them to buy the S/L therapy if school won’t or can’t or doesn’t care to pick up the tab. I believe it is important enough. (If the therapy isn’t *taking hold* because we’ve got a neurological delay, the therapy can be stopped until later and accept the fact that brain isn’t ready to learn that yet. (It happens but can make growth later.) I believe lots of things are potentially critical for which most school districts are reluctant to foot the bill.

In the meantime, we teachers must find more ways to grow those healthy dendrites and nice thick coatings on those axon sheaths.