I posted earlier how my dd’s IQ has a 20 point range between her verbal
and non-verbal. Two psychologists have said this is very odd. Is this
not worth pursuing to see if that would qualify someone with a LD? I
mentioned earlier that she doesn’t qualify for services because she is
performing within her IQ ability, but to me for there to be such a
swing there must be something wrong? Maybe I’m trying to justify. Her
scores were 88 and 66, so they average them together for a 77 but the
school psychologist even made note that her true IQ is more like the
88. It looks to me that something is causing the one score to be so low. Do I have a point or is this common? I just found it strange that even the psychologist mentioned how big of a swing that was and she was puzzled by it. It stinks because that score makes her entire IQ lower and they compare her to a 2.8 grade equivelant and that’s about where she is so there is not a big enough difference to qualify her for any special ed, just accommodations. What are your thoughts?
Christi
Re: Can a 20 point difference in an IQ score reveal an LD?
Yes, it sure can reveal an LD. There should only be a 5pt difference between the 2 on average for a ‘typical’ person.
Assuming your child was administered the WISC, it says IN THE MANUAL that if you have this kind of gap, then your true IQ is more in line with the higher score (which is what your Psych indicated). The higher IQ is what they are SUPPOSE to use for qualification purposes in this scenario!!
You should also ask them for a copy of all the subtests and you want to look for scatter. Go to www.wrightslaw.com, there is an article on how to read and understand these test scores. I think that article might also be posted here on LDONLINE. The subtests are what can tell you cognitively what might be a struggle.
Re: Can a 20 point difference in an IQ score reveal an LD?
My dd had her testing this year and the WISC scores were all over the place. They used scaled scores and said she showed scores from 1 to 8. Not sure if that means 10-80 or 10-89. They did not give me a verbal vs. nonverbal score. They are all over the map and the full scale score was 65, but the psych noted that this was to be taken with caution because it was not representative of her learning skills because of the huge spread.
I read that article on wrightslaw last night and found it to have a lot of information. I didn’t feel up to pulling out the testing data to try to analyze it, but I might do that later.
I have read that the “difference in scores” criteria is no longer required to qualify someone for LD. You might want to check the net for that too.
Kathryn
Re: Can a 20 point difference in an IQ score reveal an LD?
My daughter has the WISC IQ test and they found a 21 point difference between performance and verbal IQ’s. It is very significant and usually points to a diagnosis of Non Verbal Learning Disorder. Of course you need to have other charactersitics of this disorder to qualify. She was only 5 1/2 then and now 7 1/2 and the same issues are there and we are having her retested. They said at the age of 5 she was too young to diagnos but to be prepared because it was likely, especially with that kind of IQ spread, her difficulty feeling socially comfortable and then fine motor weakness. She is now in second grade school and school is harder and invloves some executive functioning of the brain, which is very difficult for her. I would find a neuropsychologist who is familiar with NLD.
My daughter has a 17 point gap between her nonverbal and verbal abilities in the WISC-IV test. The psychologist just put in her report that my daughter has a “unique set of thinking and reasoning abilities that make her intellectual functioning difficult to summarize by a single score.” Maybe that was her way of saying it’s bizarre! Anyway, I read somewhere that children with this kind of spread can get frustrated because they are more intelligent than they can verbally indicate. Anyway, my daughter has some auditory processing deficits and a math disability. The math disability is clear in her performance versus IQ scores. However, like you I am perplexed about my daughter’s verbal performance scores, which indicate she should be doing much better in school in language arts than she is. Anyway, good luck and hopefully someone else can tell you something more.