Understanding Diagnosis

[woody70]

Hello,

 

My 15 year old daughter was just diagnosed with a LD. She has been on an IEP from the 4th grade for anxiety. The never connected the learning disability until I had private testing. Could someone help me understand her results of WISC-IV Scores Summary. She was not given an overall Full Scale IQ because of the *significant discrepancy bewteen the composite scores.

 

Verbal comprehension: 8

Perceptual reasoning: 30

Working Memory: 13

Processing Speed: 34

 

I just don't understand how this was missed for so long, also what does it mean. Any feedback would really be appreciated.

 

Regards,

Eileen

[Sheila]

Hi Eileen, It's good you had your daughter tested to get a better understanding of her strengths and weaknesses. It must feel good to start getting some answers to her academic performance. It would be helpful to have more information on her scores and the interpretation provided though.

WISC-IV composite scores (for each of the 4 categories) are usually presented in terms of 100 being average, with a high of 160 (extremely gifted) and a low of 40. And then percentiles are usually given, to tell you how many children out of 100 would have scored the same way. Could you give more details on all the scores they gave you?

It makes sense that they would not provide an overall IQ with personal strengths in some visual areas and weaker verbal skills. It's kind of like if someone was a good sprinter but a poor swimmer, it wouldn't make sense to combine their performances and comment on the person as an overall athlete, that would not be meaningful.

Could you please write back with more details from the report they gave you and any specific suggestions they gave? Then we can give more feedback.

Thank you! Sheila