Basicaly I don;t think that IQ tests should be used on people with CP unless
the person giving the test is familiar with CP.  Many times unless you have
someone who is very good at giving the test and is familiar with CP, the
person will be said to have a low IQ becasue the parts of the test mesure
your ability to preform vissualy and fine motor skills.  For instance one
mother wrote me telling me of her daughters case and  how her very bright
daughter had scored very low on the IQ test down to being bordeline retarded
because she could not tie her shoe or wright because of her fine motor skills
deficet.  What dose you fine motor ability have to do with your I is my
question?  Just because you can't tie your shoe dose not mean you are not
smart.
 My early IQ scores were very low too because of this but through OT I was
able to improve fine motor a bit.

I am about to make 2 contordicting statements so don''t jump all over me.

1.  If the test is done by a person who knows how varied CP can be--and is
not going to (well the test dose this not the person) end up giving the
person an outrageously low score because of physical imparments...and is not
the primary means of determining placement in an education setting...in other
words the teachers look past the peice of paper I think it is ok to  use
psych tests.

2.  If..as has happened to many and maby some of the parents of school aged
kids can attest to this..the test is used as the only determination of ones
intelegence...and people with CP who have grater motor deficets get placed in
special ed or self-contained just because the test says they have a low
IQ...and the parent knows that the child is bright then I think that the IQ
testing causes much more of a problem and emotional pain and thus should not
be used.  In these kind of cases and circiumstances they are not producing
accurate results.  This often happens when the people giving  are just
following the standard instructions to the standardized tests and some of
these standards don;t account for the nature of lack of standardization for a
person with CP.

I will say that if you go outside the school setting and find somebody who
really is awear and knows how to test someone with CP the results can be
quite enlightening, and accurate.

Anee
http://www.geocities.com/aneecp/CPIC.html
In a message dated 9/19/1999 10:49:29 AM Central Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<< Good Day -

 Anee, Why don't you think IQ tests should be done on all people with
 Cerebral Palsy ?  People really don't understand CP around here .

 Kathy >>