Her first testing at 13 months was the Bayley Scales of Infant Development. She scored an 80 for cognitive at that time, though there was a lot of question as to how much of that was due to her communication difficulties as opposed to true cognitive. When she was retested at 24 months with this same test, she scored a 90, which is within the normal range.
More recently, she was tested at 33 months with the DAYC - Developmental Assessment of Young Children. Sweets scored an 84 on the cognitive subtest of this assessment.
Today, Sweets had an in-depth cognitive assessment done, the Stanford Binet Intelligence Scales. Based on her scores in the past, I expected her to score in the 80's on this test. Her actual IQ on this test was 73, which was 4th percentile, so quite a bit lower.
The subtests on this assessment each have a verbal and a nonverbal component. The subtest scores are on a scale where 10 is average and the standard deviation is 3. The composite scores are on a scale where 100 is average and the standard deviation is 15.
| Subtest | Nonverbal | Verbal | Composite |
| FR (Fluid Reasoning) | 10 | 6 | 88 (21%) |
| KN (Knowledge) | 7 | 6 | 80 (9%) |
| QR (Quantitative Reasoning) | 6 | 4 | 72 (3%) |
| VS (Visual Spatial Processing) | 7 | 6 | 79 (8%) |
| WM (Working Memory) | 9 | 9 | 94 (34%) |
| IQ | 73 (4%) | 76 (5%) | 73 (4%) |
Certain subtests were really good, like working memory. The examiner said that this subtest would score low in children with ADHD, and for Sweets it scored in the normal range. Sweets also scored well in reasoning, which measures problem solving, so that's great! She scored most poorly on math skills. She was not able to count to 3, and she did not demonstrate knowledge of the concepts of bigger/smaller, more/fewer.
Overall, she doesn't seem to be held down by her communication skills in this test, because her verbal scores were not significantly lower than her nonverbal skills. If they were, then this might indicate that she should take a test specifically for nonverbal assessment. The examiner considered giving her one anyway, but didn't think Sweets would be engaged with that test.
So, where do we go from here? I don't really know what this means. I think that it makes it more likely that she will qualify for services with an IEP though. I still don't have a great understanding of what the criteria are for qualification, but from what I've read it is something like 2 standard deviations below in one area or 1.5 standard deviations below in two or more areas. One standard deviation is 15, making 1.5 standard deviations below a score of 77.5 and 2 standard deviations below a score of 70.
Sweets now has 73 for cognitive, 74 for PT, and 79 for speech. I find it very odd that she scored the highest from speech out of these, considering I feel like speech is her biggest issue. But she does have two scores below 77.5 now, so at least that means I think she will qualify for services. I really hope that is going to include speech services, since that's what I think she needs most. I wonder if this will qualify her for developmental day as well now, which would mean mostly free daycare. There's got to be a silver lining, right?
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