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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 149976" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>Testing too much or too often is pointless, because you're not getting true results. But if you take the tests which HAVE been done, all of them, and dig into the sub-scores, THERE should be your answers. Are his scores in each sub-group similar? Or are they really high in some spots and really low in others? Are there ANY really high scores? Any low ones? If there is a wide disparity, the results should not be averaged out into a single IQ score, because it is meaningless. </p><p></p><p>For example - difficult child 1 was tested when he was about 15. He had some very high scores (up to 16 or 17) and some really low ones (one was as low as 6). But they were averaged out and I was told, "He's not as bright as you reckon, he's only a little above average. This means that when you look at how he's actually doing it's not that bad. He may be at the top of the class in one or two subjects, but that is as much as he can do. He'll never be better than average in most of his subjects, and his IQ score reflects this. So his current below-average marks are not such a big deal."</p><p></p><p>Interestingly, a different school counsellor said the same thing about difficult child 3. "He's really doing very well, considering his IQ is only a little above average."</p><p>"Since when is his IQ only a little above average?" I asked her. "He was assessed six months ago as having an IQ in the top 1%."</p><p>"I tested him last week," she told me. "I had half an hour spare, so I gave him a quick assessment. And when I averaged it all out, his IQ score came in at 105."</p><p></p><p>I did try to tell her - first, she had tested him without my knowledge or permission, or I would have reminded her of the futility of testing him again so soon. Second, you can't get any sort of accurate idea in half an hour's testing. Third, I strongly suspected she had found big gaps in his sub-scores (she did admit this) which meant that averaging it all out with big gaps was inappropriate.</p><p></p><p>Of course she just smiled in a superior way; clearly, I was a protective parent convinced I had a genius child and refusing to be convinced otherwise by her evidence.</p><p></p><p>So I didn't tell her my final killing argument - I'm going to have more faith in the two-day, detailed testing by two PhD students in clinical psychology specialising in testing students with autism, than in a school counsellor whose training in psychology was perfunctory, at best and who believes that difficult child 3 "isn't autistic any more" because his vocabulary now falls in the normal range.</p><p></p><p>IQ testing was not designed to identify ACCURATELY a child with major problems developmentally. It was designed to distinguish between one child and another, in the sub-group of children capable of attending a mainstream school at the time the tests were developed. And remember, back in those days difficult children were generally not in mainstream schools. The tests were also socially and culturally skewed, so a test developed for white US students will be far less likely to give an accurate picture when given to Asian students, for example.</p><p></p><p>I remember doing various IQ tests when I was a child. I also remember being given a briefing beforehand, being told to ignore certain specified questions because they didn't apply to students being educated in Australia. Or we were told how to interpret the question (such as recognising that "fall" means "autumn"). An IQ test that leans on being able to spell accurately is going to mark Aussie kids wrong, if the spelling standards use US spelling. And vice versa. But due to numbers of tests published as proportional to population of that country, it was always cheaper for people in Australia to buy the US-printed tests than to seek out Australian versions of them.</p><p></p><p>That is just an example, but in general you shouldn't stress over test results being 99, or 101, or 105. They are by their very nature, inaccurate. As a result, their innate error is often quite large. They can give a broad idea, but not much more. </p><p></p><p>It's the difference between accuracy and precision. I might measure the length of a piece of string, to be 9.6754 cm. But if the ruler I'm using has no graduations smaller than a mm, this is far too precise. The error HAS to be, by definition, half the smallest division on the measuring device. That means, for a ruler graduated in mm, the error has to be plus or minus 0.5 mm, or 0.05 cm. The measurement of 9.6754 cm, plus or minus 0.05 cm, is ludicrous. It may be accurate, but it is not precise. You should correct the answer to reflect this - the string's length should be described as 9.7 cm, plus or minus 0.05 cm.</p><p></p><p>I don't know my own IQ score. Although I and my fellow classmates in my era got tested a lot, the results were kept secret. However, I always suspected I'd scored highly because of the way teachers reacted to me when they first read my records. They almost genuflected (until they got to know me). And I always felt like a fraud, because I was never able to achieve at the level they all expected. I suspect I only scored as high as I did, because I was an avid reader with a corresponding larger vocabulary than usual. I remember one IQ test being administered on a one-to-one basis. I was being shown a series of pictures (four images to a page) and asked to point to the one image out of the four which best corresponded to the word he gave me. One in particular amazed my questioner - it was "tangent". The images were a circle and a line, but only in one image did the circle rest on the line touching at only one point. I only knew the answer because I had been idly reading my maths text book while waiting for the tester to arrive.</p><p></p><p>I'm with the others - find a new psychiatrist, one who places less importance in the specific score, but who instead looks at the subscores, as well as your actual observed problems, and says, "let's work from here."</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 149976, member: 1991"] Testing too much or too often is pointless, because you're not getting true results. But if you take the tests which HAVE been done, all of them, and dig into the sub-scores, THERE should be your answers. Are his scores in each sub-group similar? Or are they really high in some spots and really low in others? Are there ANY really high scores? Any low ones? If there is a wide disparity, the results should not be averaged out into a single IQ score, because it is meaningless. For example - difficult child 1 was tested when he was about 15. He had some very high scores (up to 16 or 17) and some really low ones (one was as low as 6). But they were averaged out and I was told, "He's not as bright as you reckon, he's only a little above average. This means that when you look at how he's actually doing it's not that bad. He may be at the top of the class in one or two subjects, but that is as much as he can do. He'll never be better than average in most of his subjects, and his IQ score reflects this. So his current below-average marks are not such a big deal." Interestingly, a different school counsellor said the same thing about difficult child 3. "He's really doing very well, considering his IQ is only a little above average." "Since when is his IQ only a little above average?" I asked her. "He was assessed six months ago as having an IQ in the top 1%." "I tested him last week," she told me. "I had half an hour spare, so I gave him a quick assessment. And when I averaged it all out, his IQ score came in at 105." I did try to tell her - first, she had tested him without my knowledge or permission, or I would have reminded her of the futility of testing him again so soon. Second, you can't get any sort of accurate idea in half an hour's testing. Third, I strongly suspected she had found big gaps in his sub-scores (she did admit this) which meant that averaging it all out with big gaps was inappropriate. Of course she just smiled in a superior way; clearly, I was a protective parent convinced I had a genius child and refusing to be convinced otherwise by her evidence. So I didn't tell her my final killing argument - I'm going to have more faith in the two-day, detailed testing by two PhD students in clinical psychology specialising in testing students with autism, than in a school counsellor whose training in psychology was perfunctory, at best and who believes that difficult child 3 "isn't autistic any more" because his vocabulary now falls in the normal range. IQ testing was not designed to identify ACCURATELY a child with major problems developmentally. It was designed to distinguish between one child and another, in the sub-group of children capable of attending a mainstream school at the time the tests were developed. And remember, back in those days difficult children were generally not in mainstream schools. The tests were also socially and culturally skewed, so a test developed for white US students will be far less likely to give an accurate picture when given to Asian students, for example. I remember doing various IQ tests when I was a child. I also remember being given a briefing beforehand, being told to ignore certain specified questions because they didn't apply to students being educated in Australia. Or we were told how to interpret the question (such as recognising that "fall" means "autumn"). An IQ test that leans on being able to spell accurately is going to mark Aussie kids wrong, if the spelling standards use US spelling. And vice versa. But due to numbers of tests published as proportional to population of that country, it was always cheaper for people in Australia to buy the US-printed tests than to seek out Australian versions of them. That is just an example, but in general you shouldn't stress over test results being 99, or 101, or 105. They are by their very nature, inaccurate. As a result, their innate error is often quite large. They can give a broad idea, but not much more. It's the difference between accuracy and precision. I might measure the length of a piece of string, to be 9.6754 cm. But if the ruler I'm using has no graduations smaller than a mm, this is far too precise. The error HAS to be, by definition, half the smallest division on the measuring device. That means, for a ruler graduated in mm, the error has to be plus or minus 0.5 mm, or 0.05 cm. The measurement of 9.6754 cm, plus or minus 0.05 cm, is ludicrous. It may be accurate, but it is not precise. You should correct the answer to reflect this - the string's length should be described as 9.7 cm, plus or minus 0.05 cm. I don't know my own IQ score. Although I and my fellow classmates in my era got tested a lot, the results were kept secret. However, I always suspected I'd scored highly because of the way teachers reacted to me when they first read my records. They almost genuflected (until they got to know me). And I always felt like a fraud, because I was never able to achieve at the level they all expected. I suspect I only scored as high as I did, because I was an avid reader with a corresponding larger vocabulary than usual. I remember one IQ test being administered on a one-to-one basis. I was being shown a series of pictures (four images to a page) and asked to point to the one image out of the four which best corresponded to the word he gave me. One in particular amazed my questioner - it was "tangent". The images were a circle and a line, but only in one image did the circle rest on the line touching at only one point. I only knew the answer because I had been idly reading my maths text book while waiting for the tester to arrive. I'm with the others - find a new psychiatrist, one who places less importance in the specific score, but who instead looks at the subscores, as well as your actual observed problems, and says, "let's work from here." Marg [/QUOTE]
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