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Review of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children–Fifth Edition: Critique, Commentary, and Independent Analyses

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... Despite the clinical, psychometric, and theoretical foundations of the WISC-V's internal structure, it has faced criticism from multiple independent authors (not linked to the publisher) who have performed exploratory factor analyses (EFA), confirmatory factor analyses (CFA), and bifactor analyses (BFA) with data from the standardization samples of their respective countries Canivez and Watkins 2016;Fenollar-Cortés and Watkins 2019;Lecerf and Canivez 2018;Watkins et al. 2018). Canivez and Watkins (2016) explored the internal structure of the WISC-V in the US standardization sample (n = 2200). ...
... Despite the clinical, psychometric, and theoretical foundations of the WISC-V's internal structure, it has faced criticism from multiple independent authors (not linked to the publisher) who have performed exploratory factor analyses (EFA), confirmatory factor analyses (CFA), and bifactor analyses (BFA) with data from the standardization samples of their respective countries Canivez and Watkins 2016;Fenollar-Cortés and Watkins 2019;Lecerf and Canivez 2018;Watkins et al. 2018). Canivez and Watkins (2016) explored the internal structure of the WISC-V in the US standardization sample (n = 2200). The results of the EFA highlight the clear presence of four factors (VC, VS, WM, and PS), without a fifth latent factor (such as FR) as proposed by Wechsler (2014b). ...
... In hierarchical models, g is an indirect measure or an "abstraction of abstractions" (Canivez et al. 2020, p. 289), where the five primary indices are an unnecessary intermediate layer between g and the subtests. These authors emphasize that clinical interpretation should rest solely on the FSIQ (Canivez and Watkins 2016;Reynolds and Keith 2017;Weiss et al. 2019). ...
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The WISC-V is a widely used scale in clinical and educational settings in Chile. Given that its use guides critical decision-making for children and adolescents, it is essential to have evidence of its psychometric properties, including validity based on internal structure. This study analyzed the factor structure of the WISC-V through an exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory (CFA) approach considering the age range of 853 children and adolescents between 6 and 16 years. We obtained evidence favoring the four-factor structure in the EFA, which is a clearer organization in the 15–16 age group. In the confirmatory stage, the best four- and five-factor models showed factor loadings greater than 0.4, except for one subtest in the processing speed domain in the 6–8 age group. The internal consistency ranged from acceptable to good estimates for the best two models. The results support the use of hierarchical factor structures of four and five factors, which offer specific advantages and disadvantages discussed in the article. The implications of these findings in both the professional area of psychology and future research are discussed.
... The self-form can be administered to children ages 8 through 18 years. (Watkins & Canivez, 2016). Construct validity, convergent, and divergent validity were also shown to be adequate after factor analysis and comparing WISC-V with other intelligence, achievement, and behavior tests (Watkins & Canivez, 2016). ...
... (Watkins & Canivez, 2016). Construct validity, convergent, and divergent validity were also shown to be adequate after factor analysis and comparing WISC-V with other intelligence, achievement, and behavior tests (Watkins & Canivez, 2016). ...
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Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has been considered one of the most complex and heterogeneous neurodevelopmental disorders. Since accurate diagnosis and early intervention predict better prognosis, diagnostic instruments with excellent reliability and validity are essential. The Conners Comprehensive Behavioral Rating Scale (CBRS) is widely used in pediatric neuropsychological evaluation. However, how accurately the Conners CBRS can diagnose ASD remains unexplored. The researcher utilized the archived neuropsychological testing data from 2014 to 2021 at Meier Clnics of Wheaton and analyzed the assessment results of 151 child and adolescents whose CBRS parent’s forms and teacher’s forms were completed. In this study, the results from the Conners CBRS were compared with the final diagnosis made by experienced diagnosticians (neuropsychologists) and the results of Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-2 (ADOS-2) and Autism Diagnostic Interview-Review (ADI-R). The findings showed that the symptom count of both parent- and teacher-report forms has excellent specificity but yields to weak sensitivity. The current scale score of 65 is continued to be considered as the best cut-off score, which results in most balanced psychometric properties. Teacher�report form demonstrated a slightly better diagnostic accuracy compared to parent-report form. Regarding gender difference, when a higher cut-off score is used in parent-report form, there is a slightly improved effectiveness in accurately diagnosing females compared to males. The results further support that ASD is a complex disorder that diagnosis should be made with comprehensive neuropsychological evaluations that include multiple measures and testing methods rather than a single measure.
... Eligible intelligence tests were standardized on a large, representative sample, providing normative data for accurate comparison across diverse populations. These test were commonly used in the identification and assessment of gifted children in both research and applied settings and widely discussed and critiqued in peer-reviewed academic journals, indicating acceptance within the scientific and educational communities (e.g., Watkins and Canivez, 2016). Examples of such tests are the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-V), Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales (SB5), Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (KABC-II), Raven's Progressive Matrices, and Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities. ...
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Despite the extensive history of investigation, characterization and diagnostics of giftedness is still a point of debate. The lack of understanding of the phenomenon affects the identification process of gifted children, development of targeted educational programs and state of research in the field of gifted education. In the current systematic review, we seek to delineate the specific aspects in which gifted children differ from their typically developing peers in cognitive abilities, psychophysiology and psychological characteristics. Secondly, we aim to document the prevalence and criteria of intelligence tests used to assess gifted children and adolescents. We reviewed 104 articles from more than 25 countries that examined a total of 77,705 children ages 5–18 years. Results reveal a discernible trend toward adopting more culturally appropriate measures for assessing giftedness in children. Findings highlight that gifted children generally outperform their peers in several cognitive domains such as verbal working memory, inhibition, geometric problem solving, attention-switching and elemental information processing, showcasing an accuracy-reaction time trade-off. Psychophysiological assessments demonstrate heightened and accelerated brain activity during complex effortful cognitive processes. Psychological and behavioral measures reveal that gifted children score higher on tests measuring intrinsic motivation, self-efficacy, and openness to experience; as well as achieving higher grades in school and employing better problem-solving strategies. Our systematic review can be beneficial in educational and research contexts, giving directions in assessment of giftedness and designing future research.
... To assess children's typical cognitive development, children were presented with two subtests from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-5th Edition, German version (WISC-V, Petermann, 2017; Wechsler, 2014; age range: 6-16 years). The WISC-V is a well-acknowledged instrument assessing several components of intellectual ability and complying high reliability and validity standards (for a discussion, see Canivez & Watkins, 2016). Children were examined with the subtests "vocabulary" and "matrix reasoning" given that performances on these subtests are typically seen as proxies for children's verbal and fluid intelligence respectively (Groth-Marnat, 2009). ...
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Several studies revealed links between mental rotation and mathematical tasks, but the intervening processes in this connection remain rather unexplored. Here, we aimed to investigate whether children’s mental rotation skills relate to their accuracy in solving arithmetic problems via their usage of decomposition strategies, thus probing one potential intervening process. To this end, we examined a sample of 6- to 8-year-olds (N = 183) with a chronometric mental rotation task, and asked children to solve several arithmetic problems while assessing their solution strategies. After each arithmetic problem, children were asked about their strategy to solve the respective arithmetic problem and these were classified as either counting, decomposition, or retrieval strategies. Analyses were controlled for age, sex, fluid and verbal reasoning. Results indicated that children’s response times and accuracy in the mental rotation task were best explained by linear functions of rotation angle, suggesting the usage of dynamic mental transformation strategies. A multiple mediation model revealed that children with higher mental rotation skills were more inclined to use higher-level mental strategies such as decomposition which in turn increased their accuracy of solving arithmetic problems. None of the other arithmetic strategies revealed significant indirect effects. These findings suggest that children with higher mental rotation skills may profit from visualizing and flexibly transforming numerical magnitudes, increasing the frequency of decomposition strategies. Overall, decomposition may play a unique role in the connection between children’s mental rotation and arithmetic skills, which is an essential information for planning future training and experimental studies.
... This seemed important given that the haptic condition of the scaling task involved wearing a blindfold. The WISC-V is a well-acknowledged instrument assessing several components of intellectual ability and complies high reliability and validity standards (for a critical review, see Canivez & Watkins, 2016). Children were examined with the subtests "vocabulary" and "matrix reasoning". ...
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The present study examined whether scaling direction and perceptual modality affect children’s spatial scaling. Children aged 6-8 years (N = 201) were assigned to a visual, visuo-haptic, and haptic condition in which they were presented with colorful, embossed graphics. In the haptic condition, they were asked to wear a blindfold during the test trials. Across several trials, children were asked to learn about the position of a target in a map and to localize a disc at the same location in a referent space. Scaling factor was manipulated systematically, so that children had to either scale up or scale down spatial information. Their absolute deviations from the correct target location, reversal and signed errors, and response times served as dependent variables. Results revealed higher absolute deviations and response times for the haptic modality as opposed to the visual modality. Children’s signed errors, however, showed similar response strategies across the perceptual conditions. Therefore, it seems that a functional equivalence between vision and touch seems to emerge slowly across development for spatial scaling. With respect to scaling directions, findings showed that absolute deviations were affected by scaling factors, with symmetric increases in scaling up and scaling down in the haptic condition. Conversely, children showed an unbalanced pattern in the visual conditions, with higher accuracy in scaling down as opposed to scaling up. Overall, our findings suggest that visibility seems to factor into children’s scaling process.
... For example, when Carroll's (1993) original data sets were reanalyzed, it was suggested that (a) too many Stratum II ability factors were identified and (b) most capacities specified in III-Stratum abilities have negligeable interpretive utility beyond that of a general factor (Benson et al., 2018). The consequences of aligning a Wechsler scale with CHC Theory is also evidenced by the WISC-V, which is more complex than its predecessors but lacking improved structural clarity (Canivez and Watkins, 2016). ...
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This study sought to verify whether the constructs measured on the WISC-V are equivalent according to sex and age group in Chilean students to substantiate intergroup comparisons. For this, the measurement invariance of two variants of the five-factor intelligence model was explored with the ten primary subtests (hierarchical and oblique) using multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. Seven hundred and forty participants between 6 and 16 years of age from the Chilean standardization sample were assessed. The results show complete invariance according to sex, but incomplete according to the age group. The implications of these findings in both the professional area of psychology and future research are discussed.
Article
The recently published fourth edition of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-IV) represents a considerable departure from previous versions of the scale. The structure of the instrument has changed, and some subtests have been added and others deleted. The technical manual for the WISC-IV provided evidence supporting this new structure, but questions about consistency of measurement across ages and the nature of the constructs measured by the test remain. This research was designed to determine whether the WISC-IV measures the same constructs across its 11-year age span and to explicate the nature of those constructs. The results suggest that the WISC-IV indeed measures consistent constructs across ages. The scoring structure of the test was not supported in these analyses, however. Comparison of theory-derived alternative models suggests a model more closely aligned with Cattell-Horn-Carroll theory provides a better fit to the WISC-IV standardization data than does the existing WISC-IV structure. In particular, it appears that the WISC-IV measures crystallized ability (Gc), visual processing (Gv), fluid reasoning (Gf), short-term memory (Gsm), and processing speed (Gs); some abilities are well measured, others are not. We recommend that users regroup the Perceptual Reasoning tests, and Arithmetic, to better reflect the constructs measured by the WISC-IV. Specific suggestions are also provided for interpretation of WISC-IV scores.
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Stakeholders are debating the value of cognitively focused instruction for students who have not benefited from a skills-based approach. Much of the discussion, however, is occurring without recognition of research that has been conducted in the past 2 decades. In this article, we reviewed the research. Electronic databases and hard copies of scholarly journals were searched; 239 references were identified; and 50 pertinent studies were analyzed to determine the effects of cognitively focused instruction—delivered alone or in combination with academic instruction—on students described as demonstrating poor academic achievement, learning disabilities, or specific cognitive deficits. Findings suggest that several cognitive interventions accelerated low-achieving students academic progress. Nevertheless, when the research is taken as a whole—when the pertinent studies and the interventions they describe are considered with regard to their content, quality, and results—we conclude that it does not support the use of cognitively focused instruction at this time. Implications for future research are discussed.