IQ results... Can anyone explain this to me?

Parents Forum
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<p>My brother recently took the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Childeren - Third Edition. He is 13 years old and is currently a 7th grader. He took the test and the psychologist said he did very well. However, I do not know what these numbers mean. Could anyone explain it to me? Thank you!!</p>

<p>Information - 12
Similarities - 14
Arithmetic - 15
Vocabulary - 12
Comprehension -12
Picture Completion - 15
Coding - 19
Picture arrangement - 15
Block Design - 19
Object Assembly - 15</p>

<p>Verbal IQ: 118 (High Average range 88%ile)
Performance IQ: 144 (Very superior range 99.8%ile)
Full IQ; 133 (Very superior range 99%ile)</p>

<p>What do these numbers mean? And what possible careers would he be good at? Please help me!</p>

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<p>It means he is a smart kid who has the potential to do well in school if he applies himself, learns to manage his time well and doesn’t get distracted.</p>

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<p>It also means for the moment he is likely to be better at math than at English or history, but that could change over time. In any event, he has the capacity to be a strong student. Based on this score, however, he is unlikely to wind up being compared to Einstein or Feynman.</p>

<p>He is borderline for qualifying for “mentally gifted”/“gifted and talented” programs. At my kids’ school, the line for automatic admission was 130, I think, although some places it is higher than that.</p>

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<p>It also means he is a much stronger visual learner than auditory learner. THAT large a difference between Verbal and Performance numbers</p>

<p>Verbal IQ: 118 (High Average range 88%ile)
Performance IQ: 144 (Very superior range 99.8%ile)</p>

<p>should raise a HUGE red flag for LD’s - a 20 pt discrepency is a known marker for LD’s. I suspect he may have some auditory processing issues. I would get your parents to have him tested by an specialized audiologist NOW who knows how to evaluate auditory processing disorders. Your parents should also want to have a full battery of IQ tests run. My son, with similar IQ numbers, had an auditory processing disorder and executive processing issues. Many “gifted” kids are twice gifted.</p>

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<p>He’s good at spatial processing and non verbal learning, shows attention to visual detail, has visual- constructional ability (block design), ability to learn new info, his processing speed is quick and accurate (coding).
His perceptual reasoning is stronger than his verbal reasoning.
He might develop an interest in and be suited to such careers as architecture.</p>

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<p>With few exceptions, most associations define an individual scoring two standard deviations above the mean on the Wechsler composite score as “intellectually gifted.” The mean is 100 points, and each standard deviation is 15 points. Your brother scored 3 points higher than this (IQ=133), so he would qualify as gifted in Stanford’s EPGY program, Mensa, and in most school districts (if they offer any services for such students).</p>

<p>Whether he does well in school, though, will depend on additional factors like motivation, self-discipline, and engagement. The Wechsler is not a career aptitude test. All you can deduce from it is that your brother is the sort of individual likely to do well enough on the SAT test to qualify for some sort of National Merit consideration.</p>

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<p>He’s a bright, above average IQ kid with strengths and weaknesses like many kids. And yes, some kids are visual learners and some auditory. Never hurts to have that checked out if there is a concern. At 13 it’s alittle early to be predicting what he should do for a career or even trying to guess how he’ll copy for middle school or high school! Why did he take the Wechsler?</p>

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<p>My D has a split score but going the other way (highest verbal with lower performance) and the psych told us that when that happens they “accept” the higher subscore for gifted criteria as the full score is rendered meaningless. </p>

<p>I’ll agree that it throws up flags for LD’s. Not sure what your brothers split may indicate, but my D’s flagged (and confirmed) a diagnosis of NVLD: non-verbal learning disability. As menloparkmom mentions, gifted kids can have LD’s with the label then being “twice exceptional”</p>

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<p>Another parent of a gifted-LD student. I can’t remember the breakdown of scores as it’s been a long time (he’s now 20yo), but he has a written language disability. Kids with high IQ’s quite often mask LD’s because they are able to compensate and still fall into an acceptable range of achievement. I would offer that while the numbers say he’s a gifted student what really matters is what the kids actually do with it. My 20yo with a genius IQ has yet to hit his ‘academic stride’, while his younger brothers who have lower IQ’s have done outstanding in school, participate in ECs, and in high school have been happier kids.</p>

<p>The number can help to identify learning differences and significant strengths. In some cases a certain score can open doors to enrichment opportunities. However in the end it really is just a number.</p>

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<p>It means at 13 years old he has a mental age of a 17 and about 5 months year old.</p>

<p>Edit: And yes, he qualifies for the gifted program if his IQ is over 130 as far as I know. Will it give him something? Probably not.</p>

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<p>If there are gifted progams that use IQ scores, he may have made the cut offs for them. For college, nothing. The SAT/ACT are what count for college. As for life itself, other factors become much more important.</p>

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<p>As a Feynman fan -
I would add that Feynman did NOT make the cut-off for Mensa. When he got the Nobel Prize, Mensa people contacted him and invited him to join He looked up his IQ from his school days and found out that it was below 130, not high enough for Mensa. (Not high enough for gifted programs in our SD, either.) </p>

<p>That said, I somehow do not think that most Mensa members believe that they are smarter than Feynman.</p>

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<p>The psychologist should have interpreted and discussed the results with your brother and his parents. Non-psychologists really shouldn’t be doing so, from an ethical and training POV.</p>

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<p>Generally an overall IQ 130+ is classified as gifted. The difference between performance and verbal may indicate some LDs, but since all the scores are above average (10) there’s a good chance he will do well in school without any accommodations. Our younger son had a similar spread, but his verbal and performance IQs were in the same ballpark. His low scores were in Object Assembly, Coding and Digit Span and that seems to reflect some issues with memorizing new material especially math formulas and foreign languages. (Though he’s actually very good at math.) </p>

<p>My notes from back then say that Picture Arrangement measures the ability to measure cause and effect in social situations and to properly sequence events in time. (Helps with time management and understanding verbal directions.) Object Assembly indicated ability in perceptual organization tasks that are non-verbal especially spatial information into part-whole relationships. (Score for this and Coding can be lower if your motor ability is low.) Block design is related to abstract spatial thinking.</p>

<p>It was like pulling teeth to get the info from the psychologist and he went over it so fast I had no idea what was going on. Years later I went and got a written version of the report. You should ask for it, it was very helpful. My son (with scores from 11 to 19 on subtests) did have a 504 plan for the time he was in middle school. It was supposed to include seating at the front of the room, extra time for test and access to a keyboard. It was so horribly administered that he ended up dropping it in high school. It probably caused some grades to be lower, but I believe the GC on her college recommendation made some mention of the fact that he was operating without the plan in high school. (At least I asked her to.)</p>

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<p>It means he can probably help you with your homework, but perhaps not be able to explain very clearly how he did it.</p>

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<p>psych_: Perhaps so, but many parents (myself included) have found that one or more of our children would have been routed to grossly inappropriate and even damaging educational placements had we not dared to discuss IQ results (and ask to share experiences) with other parents. Parents will not generally hear about the limits of these tests from psychologists, and it is even difficult at times for parents to determine whether the psychologist’s interpretation of results has been adequate. Furthermore, so far as I can tell, no parent who has responded to the OP has divulged any information about IQ testing that would not be available in one or more books written for laypeople and available in most public libraries</p>

<p>This especially seems to be the case with parents of students with LD’s, and especially parents of students with a gifted/LD profile. Too often, practicing professionals will offer misleading or incomplete information wrt the meaning (or stability)of scores. Parents incorrectly assume that their child does not qualify for LD support because of overall IQ, or students can be denied gifted support because of overall IQ OR a few very low subscores. (Has happened to LOTS of ASD students. ) </p>

<p>If a student has been incorrectly assessed as developmentally disabled, a different set of issues can arise, and here too it is very helpful to discuss this possibility with other parents as well as professionals. In fact, a well-known professor who works with autistic children once told me that psychologists are often hampered in their ability to interpret IQ scores because parents of students who have been incorrectly assessed (and vindicated after a decade or more) are often too angry to return with new data, and there is in fact no financial incentive whatsoever for them to “buy” the psychologist’s time to make their case.</p>

<p>Maybe in the best of all worlds, the trained psychologist would be the one to be truthful with parents,but in the real world it seems to be OTHER PARENTS (and in extreme cases a special education attorney)who will advise seeking specific services or a second opinion from an independent evaluator, and the types of services and evaluations that would best serve the student’s needs.</p>

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<p>A 133 means your son is in the gifted range of things, which as others have pointed out means that if there are gifted programs available, he would qualify (though especially these days, most school districts have either cut back or eliminated gifted programs, and the ones that exist are often one day a week ‘pull out enrichment programs’ that do nothing…and in many places there is this idea that gifted kids programs are ‘frills’, ‘elitist’ and so forth, or become a political football for parents who think it is something that looks good on a resume for college and want their kid in there…</p>

<p>I don’t know your brother, but I do know a lot about gifted kids, and what can happen with them in school. For example, does your brother do well in school, but seems to do so without working? Is he engaged in school, or is he kind of zoned out, and does he get into trouble for acting up (often kids in his range end up getting bored, it comes to easily or works against the way they work, and can be tagged as problem children…one study suggested that a lot of the kids tagged as ADD by school psychologists weren’t and when they ran IQ tests on these kids, found many of them were pegging the charts…). </p>

<p>The key thing there is he engaged? Is he actually doing the work, is he learning study skills. One of the problems often is that teachers and parents see a kid who does the work easily, gets great scores and such, and assume therefore that he/she is a good learned, and that often isn’t true, and then when they hit the kind of classes where they have to work, they have never learned the discipline and study skills required in those courses, and can end up crashing and burning…I don’t know your brother, but I would recommend observing how he does things, see if he actually spends time studying or working things through and if he seems challenged by what he is doing, or does he seem to be drifting through…</p>

<p>To share a lifestory, I was one of the gifted kids who things came too easily to, and the schools I went to did basically zip for gifted kids, and it caused me some big issues down the road and when it became apparent my own child was more out there then I was, we did what we could to make sure he didn’t repeat my path. </p>

<p>I recommend doing some research on gifted kids, to read up on what it is all about and how to handle it. Mensa has some information on it on their website, and there are a lot of other resources out there that may help.</p>

<p>The reason is not to congratulate him or set him apart, it is because of what others have written, that being gifted not only doesn’t guarantee anything, it can actually make his path more difficult. There are people in Mensa with iq’s at the gifted level or higher who have never done much, and there are plenty of stories of bright kids who crashed and burned, and plenty of people of less then gifted have done incredible things, it isn’t the IQ necessarily, it is what you do with it, and in some ways it can be more of a curse then a gift. I wish you luck, with the rest of the things if you think there is some issue with your brother, I would consult with a learning specialist to see what they think, they are probably better qualified then a school psychologist to see if there is anything to worry about and how to deal with it.</p>

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<p>I’m surprised the psychologist didn’t tell you what it means?</p>

<p>A discrepancy of 15 points or more between verbal IQ and performance IQ is an indicator of Non-Verbal Learning disability. </p>

<p>I know this because my eldest has it, in 8th grade his VIQ was 130 and PIQ was 78, that is a HUGE discrepancy. That gap has narrowed considerably but writing is a very difficult thing for him. He has always struggled in school, still does. He has a 504 and received support and accommodations throughout HS and still gets help in college. Math, statistics, etc is especially difficult for kids with NVLD. Every year and every semester has been an effort. He’s a bright kid, no doubt, but traditional testing methods make excelling academically next to impossible.</p>

<p>Once I started reading up on the characteristics, it became very clear to me that he had this disability, especially the part of NVLD kids taking everything literally and being socially awkward. Unfortunately most Special educators don’t know a lot about this disability.</p>

<p>[NLDline</a>, NLD, Nonverbal learning disorder, nonverbal learning disability, nld, nvld, NVLD](<a href=“http://www.nldline.com/]NLDline”>http://www.nldline.com/)</p>

<p>[NVLD</a>, NLD, Nonverbal Learning Disability](<a href=“http://www.ldinfo.com/nld.htm]NVLD”>NVLD, NLD, Nonverbal Learning Disability)</p>

<p>Perhaps more testing is in order but if he’s doing well in school, he’s probably learned to cope and should be okay.</p>

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<p>Oops, nevermind, I just realized that the discrepancy is the reverse of my sons, but I’ll leave the info anyway in case it helps someone else.</p>

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<p>I’ll agree that it throws up flags for LD’s. Not sure what your brothers split may indicate, but my D’s flagged (and confirmed) a diagnosis of NVLD: non-verbal learning disability. As menloparkmom mentions, gifted kids can have LD’s with the label then being “twice exceptional”</p>

<p>RobD - how is your daughter coping in school? Is she finding it as difficult as my son?</p>

<p>Mathmom - I have the same question for you…how’s your son doing with his NVLD?</p>