Are people studying for the WAIS?

[DynamicDidactic]

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I almost hesitate to make a post (feeling cute, may delete later 🙂) and having google bots make this easily accessible butttt are people "preparing" for the WAIS (and other tests) nowadays?

Came across this:


Then found this:
Amazon product ASIN B0C1J6Q1FK - Reviews are interesting to read for this

Any talk about the potential effect this may have on validity of WAIS assessment?

 

[borne_before]

Yeah... there's a mom who preps kids for gifted tests etc. it's a website.

 

[cara susanna]

I just don't get it: can you really claim your kid is gifted if they had to cheat on the WAIS? Do you get money or support or something with the "gifted" label that makes such deceit worth it?

 

[eeor1006]

Same reason parents like Felicity Huffman paid to get her child in USC as a member of their rowing team. I think that girl had zero prior rowing experience. Some people really like status.

 

[PsyDuck90]

So they get into the gifted classes and then struggle because they are inappropriately placed? I guess things have changed from when I was in school, but I don’t recall ever taking any tests to place into gifted classes. You usually got bumped up if you got an A in a regular class and wanted to try honors.

 

[PsyDr]

I've been to the Phallological Museum in Reykjavik. People who brag, or set up false expectations, are bound to disappoint.

The Terman studies don't really support correlation between FSIQ and lifetime earnings at the upper ends.

 

[Dazen]

We had a gifted program in my public school growing up that was actually pretty sick because you could skip some class time to build stuff, play educational computer games, have random self-directed projects, etc. I think it was primarily to keep kids who were bored from acting out in the classroom, but it also did a great job at encouraging intellectual curiosity and creating nerdy community. They had an IQ cutoff of 130 and we had a school psych who would do testing at teacher recommendation, but there were always parents whose kids would score in the mid 120s who would throw giant fits about their child's needs not being met.

 

[R. Matey]

We had a gifted program in my public school growing up that was actually pretty sick because you could skip some class time to build stuff, play educational computer games, have random self-directed projects, etc. I think it was primarily to keep kids who were bored from acting out in the classroom, but it also did a great job at encouraging intellectual curiosity and creating nerdy community. They had an IQ cutoff of 130 and we had a school psych who would do testing at teacher recommendation, but there were always parents whose kids would score in the mid 120s who would throw giant fits about their child's needs not being met.

In our district, this type of classroom experience is available, doesn't require an IQ cutoff, and is lottery-based for those who apply. It's a newer program, but the outcomes so far are pretty decent. It's almost as if self-efficacy might also have some to do with academic achievement...

 

[psych.meout]

A friend of mine in a major metro area was trying to get her son into a great G&T program through the public school system. The kid was 4 or 5 at the time and they did so much testing just to apply. IIRC kids had to be in the top 0.3% to get in.

We had a gifted program in my public school growing up that was actually pretty sick because you could skip some class time to build stuff, play educational computer games, have random self-directed projects, etc. I think it was primarily to keep kids who were bored from acting out in the classroom, but it also did a great job at encouraging intellectual curiosity and creating nerdy community. They had an IQ cutoff of 130 and we had a school psych who would do testing at teacher recommendation, but there were always parents whose kids would score in the mid 120s who would throw giant fits about their child's needs not being met.

This is why these practice programs exist. Parents think that the tests are wrong when their kids don't get in and that their kids would flourish there, so they're willing to game the system. I don't entirely blame them, but I do blame the grifters willing to provide these services and take advantage of these parents.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

Yup, NYC is where I’ve seen this the most. Parents are jockeying over a”seat” for kindergarten and elementary schools.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

Then they end up seeing us as adults saying they had a "147 IQ" as a child, but because they're "only average" now, it must be due to X or Y.

 

[BuckeyeLove]

"Your child is average, just like you, just like most of us, the question is...what does that mean to you, or maybe more importantly, what do you fear that means about you?"

 

[cara susanna]

I wonder if there's a way for psychologists to detect if their testing patient has been "trained."

 

[WisNeuro]

I wonder if there's a way for psychologists to detect if their testing patient has been "trained."

A little harder than assessing for malingering/sandbagging, but you may see a lot of variability within domain.

 

[ClinicalABA]

I'd just lay it out bluntly for them- "I can only use the data I get, and if that data is biased by studying, cheating, etc., the resulting recommendations may be invalid/inappropriate and you/your child may struggle with any services/placements based on these recommendations."

 

[borne_before]

Ugh, it drives me bonkers. Like 130 is some magic cutoff. In real life, the difference between 125 and 130 is minimal. Besides, IQ tests are a much more robust measure of unintelligence than anything else. An IQ of 70 is way more predictive than an IQ of 130. The IQ test is so much sensitive to intellectual disability than abstract reasoning skills.

They're really useful tools for understanding how a patient processes the world, but generalizing their results to real world outcomes has always been lacking.

I find most "gifted kids" who are now adults are reason seeking for their mediocrity (e.g., AuDHD, anxiety, etc). I also find teacher of the gifted really obnoxious. There is so much research that giftedness is generally protective (e.g., lower rates of anxiety/depression/externalizing behaviors), but the myth of silent struggling wounded gifted kid is just that - a myth. Giftedness is often a proxy for SES - as terman showed. So it kind of makes sense.

But to add some nuance, telling a kiddo who has very low self-concept their IQ can be really useful in getting them back to feeling good about going to school. The prime example is the kiddo with dyslexia or adhd who also has a high IQ.

Instead of gifted programs, I think we should just let kiddos take harder classes or bus them to a community college for some instructional time. Hence the need for individualization instead of letting them build puppets and sit around with kids of parents who are really invested in having a "gifted kiddo" just like the dad who wants their middle line kiddo to play pro ball.

 

[cara susanna]

The FSIQ might not even be homogenous. Not to mention confidence intervals

 

[smalltownpsych]

As a young child, I failed my IQ test to get into a gifted school. I don’t know what I scored, but it apparently didn’t stop me from becoming a psychologist. One thing I remembered was that I didn’t like the guy who gave me the test and I was confused as to what I was even doing there that day since my mom didn’t tell me. I remember being frustrated with not being able to develop rapport with the guy and that he wouldn’t even tell me why I was there or give me any feedback during the test.

 

[borne_before]

As a young child, I failed my IQ test to get into a gifted school. I don’t know what I scored, but it apparently didn’t stop me from becoming a psychologist. One thing I remembered was that I didn’t like the guy who gave me the test and I was confused as to what I was even doing there that day since my mom didn’t tell me. I remember being frustrated with not being able to develop rapport with the guy and that he wouldn’t even tell me why I was there or give me any feedback during the test.

Ugh. I remember when they were testing me for an IEP at school. They didn’t even tell me. I felt so anxious and scared. Just a stranger ive never met before pulled me from class.

It literally wouldn’t have killed the school psych to say “hey, you know how school is hard sometimes for you? Well these games and puzzles will help us figure out how to help you have a better time at school by helping us understand how you process information.”

It’s a real process failure.

 

[psyduckies]

Ugh. I remember when they were testing me for an IEP at school. They didn’t even tell me. I felt so anxious and scared. Just a stranger ive never met before pulled me from class.

It literally wouldn’t have killed the school psych to say “hey, you know how school is hard sometimes for you? Well these games and puzzles will help us figure out how to help you have a better time at school by helping us understand how you process information.”

It’s a real process failure.

As someone who did their postdoc at a school and did a lot of our younger grade assessments this always drove me up the wall!!! I always told my students why I was pulling them. If they were even more anxious I would tell them after each subtest how it was helping us see how their brain worked with a “each brain is unique and cool- I want to see how your brain is unique as well so we can best support you”. I would get to kids in HS sometimes for testing who has no idea why they were being tested or that they even had an IEP… after being on one for almost 10 years. Give kiddos developmentally appropriate info on why they are being tested/what their needs are/support they can get based on IEP testing so they can advocate for themselves as they get older 👏🏻👏🏻.