Intelligence/Adaptive Behavior

Adaptive behavior was assessed using: Informal Measures. Parent indicates that STUDENT is independent at home with hygiene and helps with chores around the house. STUDENT is independent around campus and in the classroom. There are no concerns in this area.

Formal cognitive evaluation was necessary to determine a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language which is a component SLD of eligibility. Joe was administered KAUFMAN ASSESSMENT BATTERY FOR CHILDREN-2Nd EDITION (KABC-II) and the WOODCOCK-JOHNSON III TEST OF COGNITIVE ABILITIES-NORMATIVE UPDATE. 

Instead of thinking of intelligence as a single unitary ability, think of it as several different Broad Abilities. Most people preform different sort of tasks at different levels. For that reason, an overall cognitive ability measure represented by one IQ score will be of little clinical or educational value.

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Cognitively, STUDENT’s abilities were within normal limits in four out of seven broad abilities measured.

1. Fluid reasoning (Gf): refers to a type of thinking that an individual may use when faced with a relatively new task that cannot be performed automatically. This type of thinking includes such things as forming and recognizing concepts, identifying and perceiving relationships, drawing inferences, and reorganizing or transforming information. Overall, this ability can be thought of as a problem-solving type of intelligence. 

2. Long-Term Storage and Retrieval (Glr): refers to an individual’s ability to take and store a variety of information (e.g., ideas, names, concepts) in one’s mind, and then later retrieve it quickly and easily using association. This ability does not represent what is stored in long-term memory; rather, it represents the process of storing and retrieving information.

3. Visual processing (Gv): Visual Processing is an individual’s ability t think about visual patterns and visual stimuli. This type of cognitive processing ability also involves the ability to generate, perceive, analyze, synthesize, manipulate, and transform visual patterns and stimuli. Examples of this type of ability include putting puzzles together, completing a maze, and interpreting graphs or charts. 

4. Auditory processing (Ga): Auditory processing refers to the ability to perceive, analyze, manipulate, comprehend and synthesize sound elements, groups of sounds, or sound patterns. A key characteristic is the extent an individual can cognitively control (i.e., handle the competition between signal and noise) the perception of auditory information. The Ga domain circumscribes a wide  range of abilities involved in the interpretation and organization of sounds, such as discriminating patterns in sounds and musical structure (often under background noise and/or distorting conditions). Recommendations that utilize STUDENT’s identified average abilities to compensate for his identified cognitive weaknesses are included in the summary. Ms. Smith shared that STUDENT preforms well in math and can quickly understand new math concepts which is reflective of his score in Gf. The difficulties STUDENT has with basic reading are with word identification and vocabulary knowledge rather than phonics. Interventions in the area of phonics were in place during kindergarten as well as in 1st grade and Joe made significant progress. Currently, his interventions are for reading fluency and vocabulary building, in which progress monitoring data indicates minimal progress. STUDENT’s success with phonics intervention may be related to his average ability in Ga. STUDENT did have significant normative weaknesses in the remaining three broad abilities. STUDENT has processing deficits in the areas of Gc, Gsm, and Gs. The evaluator applied a Cross-Battery Approach on Gc and Gsm to further analyze each ability. Because the difference between the highest and lowest scores for the narrow abilities that comprise the broad ability were not cohesive, meaning the scores fell into different normative ranges, the representing score is unlikely to provide a good summary of the broad ability it is intended to represent. An additional narrow ability sub-test was administered to provide information to the evaluator in the area of weakness in order to generate a composite score that accurately represents the broad ability.

5. Comprehension-knowledge (Gc): Historically is often referred to as crystallized intelligence. Crystalized abilities refer to a person’s knowledge base (or general fund of information) that has been accumulated over time. It involves knowledge of one’s culture, as well as verbal or language-based knowledge that has been developed during general life experiences and formal schooling. STUDENT’s composite score of 65 in Gc indicates a weakness. He did better on Verbal Comprehension than he did on General Information. An additional subtest, Riddles, from KABC was administered to further assess performance in Gc. This weakness will impact his ability to understand math vocabulary, access prior knowledge, and comprehend language that others are using. His writing may be impacted due to limited vocabulary to generate writing, incorporate word usage into writing, and may limit his descriptions.

6. Short-term memory (Gsm): Short-Term Memory is the ability to hold information in one’s mind and then use it within a few seconds. A component of short-term memory is working memory. Working memory relates to an individual’s ability to attend to verbally or visually presented information, to process that information in memory, and then formulate a response. Difficulties with working memory may make the processing of complex information more time-consuming, draining a student’s mental energies more quickly and perhaps result in more frequent errors on a variety of tasks. STUDENT’s composite score of 72 for Gsm indicates a weakness. His performance on Memory for Words indicates average ability for memory span that involves immediate recall of information. Scores indicate STUDENT has a weakness in Working Memory. An additional subtest, Word Order, from KABC was administered to further assess performance in Gsm. It is more difficult for him to store information and preform a cognitive operation on that information which requires divided attention. STUDENT’s weakness in Working Memory will impact his ability to follow multi-step instructions. He will struggle with remembering information long enough to apply or use the information and may struggle with sequencing information. He may lose his place when reading, working on a math problem, and his train of thought while writing. 

7. Processing Speed (Gs): Processing Speed provides a measure of an individual’s ability to process simple or routine visual information quickly and effectively and to quickly perform tasks based on that information. When information is processed slowly, competing stimuli in immediate awareness may cause overload on short-term memory. Tasks that involve multiple, complex processes can be particularly confusing and frustrating. Completing tests and assignments within the usual time constraints can also be difficult even when the student has adequate skills and knowledge. STUDENT’s broad ability score of 73 in Processing Speed indicates a weakness. He did better on his Perceptual Speed subtest indicating he has the ability to rapidly and accurately search, compare visual similarities and/or differences, and identify visual elements presented side-by-side. His performance was significantly lower when pictures were part of the task, a contributing factor may be his weakness in Gc. To follow up on his abilities in Processing Speed, the evaluator gathered input from Ms. Smith about his performance on timed tasks. She shared that during math drills, he struggles with completing the same number of problems in the same time as his peers. He does however get the basic math fact problems correct. When students are taking a spelling test, he generally takes longer. His weakness in Gs is especially relevant considering the significant problem Joe had in all three areas of academic fluency. Low performance on processing speed tasks suggest that STUDENT may process symbols slowly or be inattentive to the stimuli.