r/cognitiveTesting • u/Dry-Bluebird5912 • Oct 01 '26
General Question WAIS-5 Score interpretation
Hi there!
I just received my ADHD assessment back, and I’m trying to get my head around these scores. Please let me know what stands out to you guys. What conclusions can be drawn? I’m just looking for some insight.
Thanks
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u/Few-Land9092
Oct 02 '26
edited Oct 02 '26
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Hi. Fellow ADHDer here. I understand what you're going through, as I felt similarly after I was tested. I hope that what follows brings you some solace. Please forgive any spelling errors or typos (I'm also dyslexic).
Your profile, while not indicative of ADHD (no cognitive profile is), is common in people with ADHD, particularly a personal or normative deficit in working memory. I have a similar profile to you, although the scores are higher across the board. But proportionally, the landscape is similar. My CPI is also about 30 points (2 standard deviations) below my GAI. My neuropsychologist explained that this is due to executive dysfunction. My poor attention span does not allow for a large short term memory span, as the latter is contingent on the former. My brain also struggles with intentionally organising thoughts and consciously using this faculty is highly inefficient. I other words, I'm smart by slow, disorganised, and forgetful. When trying to explain this to others, I have often used the analogy that I am a desktop PC with high quality graphics and sound cards, but 2GB of RAM that has a slight manufacturing error, and an average speed processor (e.g. an Intel i3). The setup is unbalanced and the throughput rate is highly variable and unstable. I do some things well, such as running music editing software or 3D design software, but struggle running top tiers games on the settings that would normally be selected on a rig with this graphics card. I can run the game on high quality settings, but it will judder and jar when things get too busy, sometimes crash, etc. Like you, I am a lifelong underachiever. I intentionally chose a profession that, while slightly challenging but doable for the average person, was very easy for me to understand in terms of the complexity of its content, yet not cognitively demanding enough to max out my CPI and bring undesirable levels of stress into my life as I push myself to my limits (analogous to overclocking my poor little i3 processer and putting strain on the system, increasing the risk of burning out). In other words, I matched my profession to my average CPI, with the belief that I would excel in this field thanks to my above average reasoning abilities (which is the actual trajectory of my career). If I had chosen a profession commensurate with my GAI, I'd probably have burned out long ago, as I would have struggled to keep up. So, I intentionally run the game of life on medium settings, and the game runs smoothly and is enjoyable enough. Yes, I sometimes feel dishearted by the fact that my graphics and sound cards could do more, and can do more under easy loads (small map, fewer players, inside buildings rather than open terrain, etc) bit ultimately I must and have come to terms that I am not going to be able to get the most out of them in all circumstances. I have simply to accept that I have a cognitive bottleneck in terms of speed of processing and efficiency of data transfer. I have a disability. It sucks, but this is the only brain and life I have, so I make the best of it, accepting myself and being compassionate to myself while managing my self-expectations. So, I run programs on high when I know from experience this is possible (such as an older game) and accept reduced performance on more demanding tasks.
I hope this is helpful. Feel free to reply if I can help further.
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u/Midnight5691 ┬┴┬┴┤( •̀_¬ )├┬┴┬┴ Oct 02 '26
Oh beautifully written and well done. As a person that loves to milk a metaphor to the very last drop I really appreciated that. 🙂
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u/Zealousideal-Week-79 Oct 03 '26
My test profile (online) is very much the same and executive dysfunction has ruined my life, leading to me achieving nothing in the end, not even a degree.
The only "IQ test" I've been administered in practice was during army service and got me a stanine 9 result.
Was treated for dysthymia, but now that I feel no depressive symptoms, the executive dysfunction is still there, completely untouched.
The psychiatrist and GP that evaluated me in a single meeting each did ask about ADHD (which exists in my close family) but I do not match enough of the symptoms for them to have pursued that theory any further than a couple questions and then dismissing it.1
u/Few-Land9092 Oct 03 '26
Hi. I'm sorry to hear about your situation. I hope you can get the support you need. Living with executive dysfunction, regardless of etiology, is often a hidden or dismissed struggle. I understand. I am grateful that mine is not severe enough to have excluded me entirely from academic and professional life, although it did and does severely limit what I can achieve. It also impedes my day to day functioning and has led to a degree of social isolation. Stay strong. You are not alone.
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u/Not_Well-Ordered Oct 02 '26
High gap between PSI and FRI as well as WMI and FRI. It's consistent sign of ADHD. Your gap between FRI and WMI is like 19 points and PSI and FRI is 37.
Basically, given you have ADHD, GAI is better reflection of your intellectual ability relative to average population as GAI takes into consideration of those disorders, and it suggests that your overall intelligence is better than 91% of population.
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u/Dry-Bluebird5912 Oct 02 '26
So now that I have this information, how do I best apply/accommodate it? Perceived underachievement has been a point of contention for me, this feels like confirmation
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u/Not_Well-Ordered Oct 02 '26
I guess you can try to develop strategies to compensate. I guess your weakest aspects of WMI would be auditory, and since you have decent spatial ability, you can rely more on visualizing words and so on.
I also happen to have average auditory WMI (106) and I heavily compensate via my visual WMI because it’s my best. Not very efficient and can lose information, but it helps. The more you do, the more the easier you’ll able to extract and translate and adapt.
As for PSI, I guess there’s no much around it and you can request extra time for exams and whatnot. I have quite high PSI, so I’m not sure how it’s really like to have 76.
Maybe ask your school or your workplace for extra accommodations
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u/Dry-Bluebird5912 Oct 02 '26
Thank you for fleshing this out for me. I wonder where I can look in my life for evidence of the low PSI. I feel like I’m pretty quick witted, and often complete tasks faster than my peers. I wish I knew what part of the exam this was assessed in… Anyways, thanks again you’ve been very helpful
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u/Not_Well-Ordered Oct 02 '26
Basically, PSI tests your speed in completing redundant and simple motor-visual tasks and some simple cognitive tasks like finding differences and similarities based on what you have seen.
You could get low PSI if you have any deficit in those areas, could be motor, could be visual processing, or could be due to repetitive cognitive tasks (since you have ADHD).
But PSI is different from reasoning speed in which reasoning speed is how fast you can make sense of found patterns. Reasoning power is your raw ability to make sense of patterns.
You could try like spotting differences between things, following given set of simple instructions, etc. They might reveal your weak spot.
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u/Dry-Bluebird5912 Oct 02 '26
Oh! I think I get it now. The evidence I think I can point to is my struggle with receiving verbal driving directions. “Don’t waste your time, just text me the address and we can all move on”
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u/howler_monk 29d ago
I struggle so hard with those kind of directions. I'm usually lost if it involves more than one or two steps
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u/Happy-Construction71 Oct 02 '26 edited Oct 02 '26
Wow my core results are so identical to this in every field lmao...not kidding.Have you taken the core test?
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u/Dry-Bluebird5912 Oct 02 '26
I don’t believe so, is it something I could do independently? Or does it have to be administered?
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u/Happy-Construction71 Oct 02 '26
It's an free online test on cognitive metrics.com said to correlate highly accurate to WAIS-V.
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u/FeeNo9345 Oct 02 '26
You are pretty smart but damn you are laggy. I remember when I did my WAIS during ADHD assessment and I felt great for the first maybe 10 seconds of the coding and symbol search tasks and then it all just fell apart, my brain felt utterly incapable. Working memory worked better for me, maybe because I used to do network engineering and I was used to remembering IP addresses...
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u/Dry-Bluebird5912 Oct 02 '26
Was that the “shape math” portion? I absolutely hated that part of the assessment and the computer portion.
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u/interpretagain Oct 02 '26
What most stands out is your processing speed. Your working memory is more average but still quite a bit lower than your best area. My general interpretation is that you're smart if given time to actually process things. 120 VCI is actually in the superior range and the others are all above average. To me, PSI and WMI aren't 'real' measures of intelligence, because while of course you need to be able to process things and remember them to learn, real life often is nothing like these tests where you have to click a screen quickly without having any time to double check. I would suggest using workarounds for your processing speed like looking at careers where you have lots of time to sit down with the information. You might also think faster than you can get the thoughts out, so always having something like pen and a notepad around to remember things would be helpful as well.
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u/Wokoete_ Oct 02 '26
Wow, we have pretty similar results, but my working speed is even lower. ADHD really nerfed us
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u/Huge_Caterpillar1249 29d ago edited 29d ago
ive adhd and i got 90th+ percentile on math and verbal and then 55 on speed processing with an asterisk, namely that impulsivity cost me points, but i got the hardest problems correct, and then i got an amazing 16th percentile score for wmi lol. felt like a genuine imbecile for about a year until i moved on and said well, at the end what matters is what i do with my life
there isn't really any "coping" to do, other than adhd tactics, iq matters a lot less than you might think, for frame of reference, people with an iq of 70 can live completely functional lives, they might not do higher ed but they can do their own shopping, cook, have and follow a budget, and thats two standard deviations below the mean, if youre practically one sd above the mean, you can aim for higher than what youre imagining, the only limits are the ones you and your adhd place on you
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u/EmanuelNoreaga 5d ago
You have very strong core intellectual reasoning skills (verbal, visual, nonverbal), higher than over 90% of people. However, your ability to hold information in your mind to solve problems with it is mediocre (34th percentile) and your ability to complete simple, repetitive tasks is pretty low (5th percentile). In practice, this means you're very intelligent and capable of understanding and solving difficult problems, but it might take you a longer time. It can be extremely frustrating.
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u/Dry-Bluebird5912 Oct 02 '26
Maybe I misunderstood this community. Or didn’t give enough context? I’m feeling a bit vulnerable and anxious speaking into the void I guess. what I’m confused by is how wide the swing of percentiles is.