son's IQ

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My son who is 11 yo has his IQ tested recently and the score came back 50! We consider Caleb very smart, he reads and writes well, his vocabulary is exceptional.He is very poor in math but OK in other subjects. We feel he has insight way above other children his age.50-how could this be. We're thinking the testing does not consider his focus problems among other other autistic symptoms. Have any of you,being parents, had similar results from testing?
Paul

My husband had an IQ test during his ASD testing.

The "raw" score was 130. When the psychologist factored in the processing issues, lack of focus etc, it dropped the working IQ score to 108.

My husband was devastated.

It showed some areas he was absolutely brilliant, but the low areas were really, really low.

I'm sure someone here will explain how the psychologist figure those scores out.

50 sounds like the adjusted IQ score. I would call whoever tested him, and ask to explain how that score was calculated.

I would ask to see the component scores. I don't remember how many components there can be, but I know there was a LOT of scatter among the different components in my son's scores. That scatter is extremely useful to know, and you will want to see it, as well as know which of the many possible components they chose to use in this particular test.

If your impression of your son is that he's at least of average intelligence, and possibly higher, and the IQ they arrived at was 50, I would suspect some sort of testing error, or misunderstanding between the tester and your son, or lack of cooperation on the part of your son. I would most definitely have the test repeated elsewhere.

50 would be visibly mentally ret*d....at least I would imagine so.

Just asking-if we do nothing, what would be the repercussions of having a documented IQ score of this level? Paul

Knowledge is power and you want to know the score breakdowns across the sub tests, regardless of whether there is a need to contest the results.

I don't know for sure if there will be ramifications in your child's case, but based on my experiences, school districts tend to be somewhat less stingy with resources if they think the child is "smart." That said, if they know what is in the sub tests, and it is a splinter skill issue, there may be no ramifications.

Either way, -you- want to know what the sub tests are and what the scores are because the testing hopefully will give you useful information on what your son does and does not need from the school. It may be that he needs some help in certain areas and can use his strengths in other areas to assist him in the other areas where he needs help.

If the IQ was arrived at in error, then he may end up short changed as far as his educational development goes. For example, if he were actually gifted and could benefit from a gifted student program, he would not be able to enter such a program due to his currently recorded IQ.

I may be similar to my situation. I have a Verbal IQ of 142 but my Performance IQ is so low that the psychologist said it be pointless to give me a combined IQ because it would not accurately reflect my intelligence. Like others have said, I would check the subset scores.

Do not bury your head in the sand, and find out those scores.

Why?

My school district goes by IQ scores ONLY for gifted and talented, because so many parents coach for the intake tests. Those test scores sort of matter, but the main break deal is IQ score here.

IF your son has a big scatter (like the PP above), and all you have is a letter stating "50 IQ score", that is what my district runs with. If you can't prove his raw IQ is 125 or above (the minimum for GATE in my district), you are screwed. You need to prove that scatter. You need the component break down.

My district also doesn't retest for IQ if the original tester is deemed *good*, like had the test from a big deal university Autisim center.

You need a copy of the component scores because what if that tester drops dead, office closes for whatever reason and there is no way to get information for later use. If your child's score is really 50, you will need that documentation for getting social security/supportive housing/job placement help.

All this takes is a phone call and maybe a release of medical records. You might have to actually make an appointment to do a face to face. 4 hours of your life tops.

It is what it is...

Maybe the test wasn't done correctly...
Maybe the test was done correctly, and that is the component IQ score...
Maybe that is really what your child scored and is low in all areas (I doubt it this one)

You choosing to ignore score does not change it. All the test does is prove the need for help. The help for a child that scores 50 with everything being low, is very different from a kid who has big high component scores areas and very low in others.

Good luck

I see zero value in IQ tests. I scratch my head as to their purpose. I think people that are interested in IQ tests already have in mind that autism is a defect: if a child is short on certain skill areas, then we need to compensate and develop the child in those skill areas. That's precisely the wrong approach in develop children on the spectrum. You are already starting off NOT treating the child as equal: NOT as an equal-rights human being.

The usage of IQ tests reflects a total lack of understanding of how an autistic brain works, and how it can be developed.

It's funny, because whenever I see a child, my question for the parents is always: what is the child interested in? I don't need to know whether the child is high functioning or low functioning. I don't even care. I only need to know the child's interests.

It all goes back to the modulation subject that I have talked so many times before. People just try to hit on the dry spots on the leaf, while being blind to the gigantic wet spots. http://www.eikonabridge.com/AMoRe.pdf

My son learned all the skills he'll ever need to learn from elevators: talking, drawing, typing, writing, assembling build-block toys, solving math problems, presentation and public speaking, building electronic circuits, computer programming, getting rid of some of his sensory/rigidity issues, talking to strangers, and now socializing with his elevator riding club pals. I mean, they don't test elevator riding skills in IQ tests, I think? Oh, and my son is always happy: big smile everyday. Even at this very second, all I hear is his laughter.

IQ tests are useless and irrelevant. They only serve as a blaming tool. All what parents and teachers really need to know is: what are the children's interests?

Sure, there is always an ideal goal. The ideal goal is to teach children so that they can acquire skills, develop to their fullest potential, get a job, be independent, and contribute to the society. As for the route to get there, who says they need to follow the rigid paths set up by educators that have no idea about autism, at all?

It's OK, it'll take another 40 years for people to wake up and understand autism. Meanwhile, a few more million children will perish. That is just the way it is. All you can do is to sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

Challenge this. At a 50 IQ, he would not be expected to be able to handle more than life skills. As he approaches secondary school, it could really affect how guidance counselors deal with his case. They may not steer him in the right direction. Also, it sounds important to your son. I remember clearly how important my high IQ scores were to my self esteem. Everyone thought I was stupid, but I had these scores and I knew that they were wrong.

I've worked with kids who have a 50 IQ. In the olden days we would call them moderately mentally ret*d. Since the R word became a cuss word, I think they are in the moderate intellectual disability range. They struggle so much for every bit of learning. If your 11 year old is reading and writing with relative ease, the score is just plane wrong. Could have been a testing error. Could be that he was acting out on the day of. Could be that he didn't understand the directions, or gave up on a subtest that was already challenging for him. It doesn't matter. They need to have a second examiner do a new test. Don't just repeat with the same person. It cold be a rapport issue.

If it's at all financially possible, you might consider an outside evaluation. The environment is different and the tester won't be influenced by being an employee of the school. Sometimes these outside evals are more comprehensive. Although it would be fine to simply ask for an IQ test alone.

I beg to differ with your position that they are useless. What they are is a limited tool subject to error, but in the right time and place the information can be useful. The danger is that some people may ascribe more meaning to it than is warranted; that doesn't mean you throw it out. It means you use caution. It is an important item in diagnosis of ASD (since ASD individuals have unusual scatter) and the reality is we are stuck with the test for many purposes. If it is going to be out there, you want it to provide the most accurate picture it can.

As for the issues in this thread, I have one more thought:

Your son may have either frozen up or chosen to be uncooperative. Either action would create an invalid result, and might not have been noticed by the tester. Find out more about how he was during testing AND get the sub scores.

While IQ tests are certainly not infallible, in certain contexts, they can give a general picture of a person's strengths and weaknesses, and can identify learning differences, the knowledge of which can be used to tailor an educational plan to the person's learning style. They are also used to determine if a person qualifies for certain disability accommodations, and can occasionally bring to light certain neurological issues.

For example, due to my processing deficits, I work slowly. This can be mistaken for misunderstanding information on the part of NT teachers, and throughout elementary school, I was regularly interrupted when doing my work, by well meaning teachers who thought I needed help, when I really only needed additional time due to the fact that it takes my brain a little longer to make words out of sounds and make images out of shapes. The interruptions were detrimental because they slowed me down more and prevented me from completing my work myself, and reaping the benefit of that. When I was given a learning assessment, which is combined with an IQ test, it was determined that I have no cognitive deficits, only processing deficits, and what I needed was for teachers to leave me alone and let me work.

I understand. But technology is here to help. Tomorrow is nothing like yesterday. The problem in your education is not in you. It's with the teachers and your peers. The main question is, why did you even need to hang around with peers that clearly learned differently from you?

Sure, that would be a utopia yesterday. But with today's web conferencing, and the upcoming AR (Augmented Reality) infrastructure in the future, it becomes possible to gather children with similar learning characteristics together and achieve economy of scale. Individualized education, it was a slogan yesterday. But it can soon become a reality.

I say that because I never fit in during my elementary and high school years. When I got into Engineering School, I became rather popular and made tons of friends. When I got into my PhD program, I realized that, oh, there were so many people just like myself out there. And then one day, I had a high school reunion. I met with my high school friends, and I had to tell myself, OMG, I was so different from them. I moved ahead, but many of my high school friends were stuck in a time capsule and did not evolve, at all. Then it hit me: I grew up in a wrong environment, all along.

In today's world, it is no longer necessary to subject your children to the neurotypical world. Trust me, the more you force a child to fit in, the more harm you do to the child. This world is big enough, and today's remote communication mechanisms are becoming rather efficient. Even within the same city, it's often possible to find other children with similar characteristics. (Nowadays there are programming/coding clubs all over the major cities, for instance.) There is no need to waste time hanging around people that don't share your ways of thinking. It's a big world out there. There is room for individual development and specialized communities. It's no longer necessary to fit in. Technology has changed quite a bit. Sure, you can courteously interact with children of other characteristics. But you are no longer required to interact with people that you don't like. It's a bit like "multi-culturalism." You may cry foul all you like, but nowadays I hang around mostly with intellectual elites. You may say I live in a bubble, hey, but I've lived this kind of life for a long time, now... and I am glad I don't have to deal with the many mundane problems out there that other people have to deal with. In short, this world is big enough and free enough that you get to choose how you want to live.

My parents always told me I needed to socialize with people. When their friends came for a visit, I typically went into hiding. Most of them were business folks, a.k.a. non-intellectuals. Looking back at it, I would still do the same thing. I have my circle of friends, and it's not even a small circle. My circle of friends just don't overlap with my parents' circle of friends. Forcing me to join my parent's circle of friends is just plainly wrong. The same goes with the way how we ought to teach our children. THERE IS NO NEED TO FIT IN. The world is big, and very well connected. Don't apply yesterday's rules to today's children.

My quibble with IQ is that it is a "quotient". The denominator of this quotient is basically the golden standard of neurotypical children. I don't think data from neurotypical age-peer children should ever be used in the formulation of an education plan for autistic children. You may try to beautify it as much as you want. But at the end of the day, your implicit assumption is that the neurotypical children are better. Which I don't agree. We are all equal rights human beings. Don't shovel your own superiority or inferiority complex down the throat of autistic children. Period.

Galileo was sent to inquisition for saying the earth goes around the sun. Some 377 years later, the Pope had to apologize for the mistake of the Church. Homosexuality entered to DSM as a mental illness in 1953. Some 63 years, gay marriage became the law of the land in the US in 2016. See, things can and do change. If IQ tests are useless and a wrong thing to do, then the right thing to do is not to justified and defend it like how the people living in Nazi Germany, or the people that once lived in the Soviet Union or past Communist China, defended their ideologies. You can't go against history. There is a right thing to do, and whether you like it or not, it'll happen one day.

We already live inside the Technological Singularity. Wake up and realize that this is a different world.

Not everyone has the resources (financial or otherwise) to completely cut themselves and their kids off from the NT world, or necessarily thinks that is a good idea given that the vast majority of people are NT.

Most people have to avail themselves of the local schools and most people's schools are not as accommodating as the ones you enjoy. We homeschool, I would say by necessity, except that it is also a luxury because not everyone can do that for a variety of reasons. So there is a lot of nonsense that I no longer have to deal with; but while we were using traditional schools, we had to deal with a lot of issues having to do with my son's unwillingness and inability to conform.

In that circumstance you have to deal with the powers that be, including their testing metrics. I would also posit that knowing subset scores is helpful even when you are not, because it gives you insight on what teaching methods are going to be most effective with your child. You may have a lot of instinctual insight, but it does not hurt to get other input from a more formalized method.

My 11 yr old is entering highschool and her psychologist could not give an IQ score based on her wide/varied performance so she just has a written report

I think a score of 50 is adjusted and may just be an estimate but I would get a second opinion as the administrator for the WISCV is supposed to be objective