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Help with Understanding WJ III Cog and Wiat Ach Results

Submitted by an LD OnLine user on

I’m confused with my daughter 8 y/o in second grade scores. She was referred for testing because she is supposedly reading at a 4th grade level but spelling at first grade level. She is a site reader and has trouble sounding out words and figuring out how many syllables are in a word. Her writing is terrible. She also can’t memorize basic math facts but seems to understand above grade level concepts.

The psych. basicly told me to forget about phonics because of her auditory processing issues. She concluded that she “was at risk for emergence of a learning disorder and should receive writing intervention since her writing responses will not serve as an adequate reflection of her level of learning or understanding of concepts but will merely reflect her difficulties organizing her thoughts and communicating when writing.”

She did note that her written expression score was inflated because she got perfect scores on the mechanical aspect of the test…using capital letter at beginning of sentences and punctuation. She also only spelled words correctly that were already provided on the page which also inflated the score. Otherwise her sentences were all awkward and/or illogical.

I know that scatter of scores is indicative of problems but I am not sure what constitutes something meaningful in that area. The pysch. did note that there was a large discrepency within the processing speed cluster subtest with a 77 (Low) in visual matching (of numbers) and 116 (high average)decision speed(uses pictures)but didn’t have an explanation as to why this may be.

Sorry this got long….the full scores are below. Can anyone provide any additional insight? This was done outside of school so I do not if the school will provide any services since everything is within the average. Thanks so much for taking the time to read this.

DATA SUMMARY

Cognitive WJC-III

Global Intellectual Aptitude 96
Verbal Ability 113
Thinking Ability 102
Cognitive Efficiency 92

Processing Speed 94
Working Memory 86
Phonemic Awareness 87
Long Term Retrieval 106
Short Term Memory 91

Verbal Comprehension 112
Spatial Relations 105
Visual Auditory Learning 98
Sound Blending 92
Concept Formation 107
Visual Matching 77
Numbers Reversed 82
Incomplete Words 84
Auditory Working Memory 98
Visual Auditory Learning- Delayed 88
General Information 113
Retrieval Fluency 120
Decision Speed 116 Memory for Words 104
Rapid Picture Naming 102
Pair Cancellation 97

Achievement WIAT-III
Composite SS %tile
Total Achievement 104 61
Oral Language 116 86
Total Reading 102 55
Basic Reading 99 47
Reading Comprehension and Flue 107 68
Written Expression 91 27
Mathematics 111 77
Math Fluency 99 47

Listening Comprehension 115
Receptive Vocabulary 103
Oral Discourse Comprehension 120

Oral Expression 113
Expressive Vocabulary 114
Oral Word Fluency 120
Sentence Repetition 98

Total Reading 102
Word Reading 107
Pseudoword Decoding 94
Reading Comprehension 102
Oral Reading Fluency 109
Accuracy 83
Rate 111

Written Expression 91
Sentence Combining 101
Sentence Building 93
Spelling 89

Mathematics 108
Math Problem Solving 94
Numerical Operations 120
Math Fluency 99
Addition 102
Subtraction 94

SS: Standard scores, based on a mean of 100, standard deviation of 15
ss: Scaled scores, based on a mean of 10, standard deviation of 3

Submitted by eoffg on Sun, 12/23/2012 - 1:11 PM

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Hi Vickiinmd and welcome to the forum,

I’ve just been considering your post and test scores?
Where I’d like to talk about the difference between reading and writing?
Which uses a combination of auditory and visual processing.
So that as we read, the written word is first processed in our visual cortex. Which then retrieves the sound of the word from our auditory cortex.
But with writing it works the opposite way.
Where we first think of the word as a sound in our auditory cortex.
Which then retrieves a visual image of the printed word, from the visual cortex.
So that reading and writing involves a fluent connection between them. Each going in opposite directions.

But perhaps you could consider the situation if their a fluent connection one way, but not the opposite way?
So that a difficulty with one way, causes a difficulty with reading? While the other causes a difficulty with writing.

I would particularly note your daughter’s strong Rapid Picture Naming score, which uses visual to auditory connection. Which would relate to her supposedly 4th grade reading level.
So that what I am concluding, is that she doesn’t have a fluent connection the opposite way, auditory to visual?

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