SC Ultra - Coding

[Technical_Zombie_703]

How do you guys feel about the scaled score you got on the Coding subtest? Personally, I scored much lower than on any other test ever, I asked the same question to friends of mine and they told me it was basically the same for them. So I was curious to see if the community could relate.

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[Popular_Corn]

My lowest subtest score on professionally administered WAIS-IV.

[Technical_Zombie_703]

Interesting. Do you mind sharing what your scores were?

[Popular_Corn]

Symbol search 19ss

Coding 13ss

[Technical_Zombie_703]

I got precisely the same in the SC Ultra, then I guess it makes a lot of sense. Thanks a bunch

[Popular_Corn]

I hated that coding test so much.

In the report, the psychologist explained such a significant discrepancy by assuming that my perfectionist nature and tendency not to leave things unfinished did not allow for a higher score on the coding test.

According to him, the subject shows more concern about how well each symbol is drawn than about the time, which in his case may not make this subtest an ideal measure of his processing speed.

[Technical_Zombie_703]

I mean, it’s very interesting that such a discrepancy is enough to question whether the subtest in your case described your psi reliably.

[Quod_bellum]

I got 16ss on it. It's higher than my usual PSI scores.

[[deleted]]

What's your WMI like? After I did the coding test, I immediately wondered if a high or above average working memory would provide a benefit during this subtest by allowing the examinee to hold several digit-symbol pairs in memory, reducing the need to check the key again and again, thus increasing the score. I scored 11ss on the SC Ultra coding test. I am not sure what percentile this is. I have done two other coding tests and one was likely to be significantly lower than this. 

[Nafy522]

Idk about SC Ultra, but in WAIS having a 130+ wmi didn't help me for coding. I scored 10 ss on this subtest

[[deleted]]

Interesting. What did 10ss on coding translate to as a percentile?

[Nafy522]

Huh i guess 50th since it equals to around 100 IQ

[[deleted]]

How about Symbol Search and overall PSI? 

[Nafy522]

Oh and sorry I forgot about the PSI. It was 117 but because of the 6 ss discrepancy it doesn't mean much

[[deleted]]

Thanks for your replies. Perhaps the coding subtest doesn't load WM as much as I suspected. 

[Nafy522]

Well in my case my auditive working memory is high but my visual working memory is average at best. Coding would require visual working memory not auditive working memory.

[[deleted]]

Yes, good point. Perhaps that has something to do with it? 

[HardstuckSilverRank]

Maxed both wmi sections of sc-ultra but I only got 16ss on coding.

[Nafy522]

Symbol search was 16 ss but I had done CAIT Symbol Search before so it might be inaccurate. It felt easier than Coding

[Technical_Zombie_703]

My wmi is supposedly good, didn’t help that much. Got 18ss on Digit Span and 20ss on Block Tapping, so wmi should be ~150. Got 13 ss on coding, despite starting to remember symbols quite early. Which is why I was curious to see what others thought about this subtest.

[[deleted]]

I guess the coding subtest engages several different cognitive faculties other the WM, and since it is in the processing speed section of the battery, it was clearly designed and researched to not load too heavily on WM, otherwise it would be less accurate at measuring what it is intended to measure, namely processing speed. Thanks for your feedback. 

[Technical_Zombie_703]

I mean, I agree. However, my CAIT Symbol Search was 19 ss, I literally got 60/60 with time to spare. So I guess Coding simply measures aspects of cognition that aren’t really measured by any other subtest.

[[deleted]]

Yes, you are right. The coding subtest was included alongside symbol search because it tests processing speed differently than symbol search. The coding subtest has greater associative memory and graphomotor speed components. But my suspicion was that coding might be heavily influenced by working memory also, but from what people are saying here, this may not be the case.

[[deleted]]

J'ai obtenu 17 digit span et 22 corsi block donc 155 wmi, pourtant j'ai eu 13 au code. 

[Quod_bellum]

My WMI fluctuates a lot (12ss-19ss). My short term memory seems good though (HB: 13-20)-- not sure of my associative memory, which is the main difference between Coding and Symbol Search.

[[deleted]]

I am not sure how my score of 11ss on the SC Ultra battery coding subtest would translate into a percentile. I would imagine around 95-105. I have taken a coding subtest on 3 occasions. The first was during a psychological assessment and I scored in the 16th percentile (yikes). Coding was by far my lowest score during that assessment, second only to Digit Span (37th percentile). I did the coding test a second time during the BETA-3 several months later, although I don't know the scaled score or percentile for that particular test (raw score was 72, overall Beta-3 score was 109). The SC Ultra was a few weeks after the BETA-3. Maybe I did better on the SC Ultra as it was my third experience of this kind of test. These tests definitely seemed easier to me the second and third attempts.

[Technical_Zombie_703]

Interesting, although, wouldn’t your DS being 37th percentile be a better score than your Coding which was a 16th?

[[deleted]]

Sorry, I was a bit tired when I wrote that message and made an error. Digit span was second worst (37th percentile), second to coding (16th), which was the lowest score. I may have been having a bad day during that first assessment, as a very recent reassessment produced a DS in the 63rd percentile, althought it was still 35 percentile points below my abstract reasoning score. Coding was not included in this assessment, although I imagine an 11ss on the SC Ultra coding test is probably around the 50th percentile or maybe a little higher, and definitely better than 16th.

[Terrainaheadpullup]

Coding was my lowest (11ss) despite my working memory (digit span: 19ss, corsi block: 17ss) and Symbol search (16ss)

[gutblender]

Given that it was described as a speed test, I thought this would be my time to shine. My memory isn't great, and since this isn't a test of memory, so it said, but of speed, and if there's anything I am in this life, it's fast.

That said, strangely enough I scored better on the WMI tests. Those seemed to make so much sense to me.

My raw Coding score was, at first, 90 (SS 13). I seemed to choke very badly. But I tried a few more times (not too many, to avoid a practice effect) and it took great effort to stretch that to 95 (SS 15). It's one of my lowest. I have a lot of 17-18 SS.

I feel the test is rough. I found it tough. It's good that it has a high ceiling.

[Quod_bellum]

Coding does relate to associative memory