WAIS III results - do I have LD?

Of course “Do I Have LD” is a little more co mplicated than the WISC would say, but you probably wouldn’t qualify for services in any public school if you were a kid :-)

You have a significant weakness in that “picture arrangement” subtest, but no other issues with the visual processing that show up here. Wish I’d been there for the test … but you may remember it. Do you remember why that was a struggle - or perhaps wasn’t a struggle? (If it wasn’t hard, then p’raps you did something perfectly “logical” to you that wasn’t the logic of the test.) If it was a struggle, do you have a lot of trouble with visual organization? (ARe you the Royal Clutter Monster :-))? If so, it would sort of make sense that you’d have a bit of trouble with the digit span… where you also had to hold things in memory and put them in order. Your ability to manipulate symbols (or just lack of any anxiety with numbers) could have put you past that 25% of folks who had you beaten on the pictures. Coding also has a significant visual organization element to it.

It’s probably that English as a second language that leads to the slightly lower Comprehension score, which is very much based on social stuff and therefore going to have a bit more culture thrown in.

I’d take a wild guess and suggest that you applied a lot of verbal reasoning skills in order to do well on the other performance tests… did you describe the block design patterns to yourself in words, or take a mental picture of them?

I’m imagining the psych who wrote my report up writing this one… and he’d probably have found *something* to say about the relative low scores, but then I wonder if that’s based on the fact that hey, people don’t go get tested if there isn’t a problem! Let’s see, I wouldn’t recommend being a pedicurist or tattoo artist as a career off the top of my head…

Did they do any otehr tests - visual memory, that sort of thing?

What was that about the Royal Clutter Monster? Who was calling my name?

Thanks Sue,

The picture arrangement subtest was the hardest for me not because of visual problems. Some stories just did not make sense to me and I had to guess… Thanks God this subtest was removed from WISC IV and matrix reasoning was added instead, so my kid got a better result for WISC IV… still on the other side of the curve…
In Comprehension I did not hear a word in one of the questions and asked to show it to me (I needed to see the spelling) but the psychologist refused.. I am very visual. Maybe for a couple of questions I got partial marks…
Working memory was always my weakness (digit span - still it’s average!), but I easily compensate - I write things down.
Block design was fun… I slowed down in the middle, but then learned on the fly and did not that bad, and yes I did describe it to myself in words and turned the picture sometimes as well.

Does “Royal Clutter Monster” means messy? yes this is me!!! always have been.
No, I did not do any other tests. If I was tested when I was a kid, I would probably get the highest in Information, Similarities and Vocabulary, but would bomb Comprehension and Pucture arrangement - social stuff(probably would get NLD diagnosis). Anyway, why do I need this kind of IQ? I would gladly give half of it to my son… then we both would be normal.

Surely you wouldn’t want to be NORMAL?????!!!!!

But yea, it’s sometimes a little alien-feeling.

I feel sorry for visual Clutter MOnsters :-) I’m so strongly auditory that I just tune it out (but have some of the same kinds of working memory issues). It drives the other peopel who have to see it to distraction, but I don’t see it. Hmmm…. wonder if the clutter issue is working-memory breakdown or struggling with seeing the ‘big picture?’ I reckon if you’re like me, and it’s a tangled mess and no, you DON’T know where everything is, that it’s lots of the former.

I meant other tests like… oh, now I don’t remember what they were, but when I got tested she didn’t use the WAIS (it wouldn’t have been valid - I know it awfully well :-)) but did some other interesting tests of memory and information manipulation.

My long-distance foggy-crystal-ball guess would be that on tests like the WAIS you can use your fast processing abilities to figure out *most* things at least as well as the average Joe(sephina), but that real life situations sometimes expose a raging weakness. I know for me it shows up in those nonverbal social situations. It helps to do what Rick LaVOie calls a “social autopsy” - going back over a situation & analyzing where thigns went amuck, though sometimes it takes somebody else who can fill in the missing information (like, “just because somebody says ‘it’s okay,’ doesn’t *mean* it’s okay, keep doing it, it might mean ‘it’s okay since you apologized but it drives me nuts!’” or “It’s okay, to your face, but yea, I’m going to be talking about how WEIRD you are to my cohort…”)

Erm….It seems your like your IQ is plenty high enough to compensate for any weaknesses.