IQ's Corner: Visual-graphic tools for implementing intelligent intelligence testing in SLD contexts: Formative concepts and tools

The slides in this post are preliminary findings and formative ideas that are going thru a period of incubation and will hopefully eventuate in an eventual presentation and manuscript. The material is being developed to help flesh out intelligent selective referral-focused assessment for RTI treatment resisters and to provide information to help implement the various third-method consistency/concordance models for SLD. I believe the figures speak largely for themselves if one studies them enough. Familiarity with the complete set of WJ III cognitive tests (Diagnostic Supplement included) is helpful as it will allow a person to decipher the test name abbreviations. Also, one needs to be familiar with the general concepts of third method consistency/concordance SLD models (see Flanagan & Fiorello, 2010). Also, one needs to be familiar with the CHC nomenclature codes to understand what each test is classified as measuring.

A visual representation of the third method SLD models as presented by Flanagan & Fiorello, 2010) is below. [Click on image to enlarge]

These results are derived from my art+science exploratory data analysis of the WJ III norm data guided by the findings from McGrew and Wendling (2010). Analyses included (a) multiple regression prediction of two reading and two math achievement subdomains (only two are featured here) with selected subsets of WJ III cognitive tests (using backward elimination of variables one-at-a-time; many eliminated tests re-entered at end to insure they were still not significant predictors that should have been retained in the final model), (b) calculation of all cognitive test g-loadings via first unrotated principal component across ages 6-18 years, and (c) multidimensional scaling (MDS--Guttman Radex model) of the complete set of WJ III cognitive predictors.

Visual graphic summaries are presented in hopes of stimulating thoughts about how these presentation methods might be used to allow examiners to engage in intelligent selective referral focused assessment decision-making grounded in data (but the numbers are minimized on purpose), theory, and logic.

Conflict of interest warning. I am a coauthor of the WJ III.

Click on images to enlarge.