Assessments of intellectual and academic functioning may be called many things… you might have heard the terms ‘psychometric’, ‘psycho-educational’, ‘learning’, ‘cognitive’, ‘intellectual’, or ‘neurodevelopmental’ used to refer to types of assessments. You may have even heard of the tests themselves, predominantly we find people asking for ‘WISCs’ and/or ‘WIATs’ following advice from their school or paediatrician. To most people, it can be a little confusing to say the least!
The “why”
There are many reasons why it might be suggested to get your child assessed. When children are not learning as expected, having trouble reading words or text, working with numbers and mathematical problem solving or putting together sentences or longer pieces of writing, or presenting challenging behaviour in class or at home, it can be useful to be able to put together a picture of how they learn including any diagnosable difficulties they might be having. The primary purpose is to understand what the impediment might be in order to fix it. By fixing it, we might mean engaging in specific interventions around areas of learning, provide strategies for learning success where possible, and identify whether modifications to what is being learned or accomodations (changes to the learning environment) for how the learning will be done are needed. Sometimes we are recommending things that might be helpful at school, home or even sometimes accessing other services. Other times we are providing information to schools that may be used in funding applications or for a student to obtain special provisions in the senior years of high school (and sometimes the first year of university or TAFE).
What is it?
Typically a psycho-educational assessment will involve an assessment of intellectual or cognitive functioning and an assessment of learning or academic functioning. Both of these tests are standardised and individually administered, providing specific information within a confidence interval about an individual child/adolescent. Intellectual or cognitive functioning is generally pretty stable throughout life and it is important to know that whilst these abilities are generally fixed – people may not actually function at the level of their intellect. They may not be functioning at their potential and similarly they may function beyond it – particularly where they have excellent strategies around learning or a great work or study ethic. We also know that we are not seeing a complete picture of someones abilities in an IQ test. The results on a standardised test of cognitive ability represents the researched and quantified aspects of intelligence that rhave been shown go into the process of acquiring knowledge and learning. Emotional intelligence, for one, is not assessed in these tests as you could say it is beyond the scope of what they are used for. So whilst a cognitive test provides us with lots of helpful information, it is not the sum total of anyone.
What is involved?
What intellectual or cognitive assessments do involve are a series of novel activities that the examinee undertakes that tap into different types of abilities – verbal and non verbal, some pertaining to higher order thinking skills involving problem solving and others geared at assessing their cognitive proficiency or how well they sort the information for the higher level problem solving. Understanding what may be a strength and what may be a weakness (objectively speaking compared to others but also subjectively speaking within any individual) can tell us a lot about what works for them in terms of learning.
The academic aspect of the assessment looks at learning across basic skills of literacy and numeracy to understand what that individual has been able to learn. Whilst you may already have some information from your child’s school in the form of test results and school reports to tell you about this – there are may variables that may be contributing to this performance. An individually administered standardised test provides the best possibility of obtaining information about what your child has learnt and how their skills compare to a standardised sample of same aged peers. It is also possible to observe how a young person approaches a task and what strategies they draw on to answer questions. This is able to be interpreted next to diagnostic criteria for specific learning disorders whilst also screening for other neurodevelopmental disorders such as ADHD and Autism.
Typically we are able to provide parents and teachers and at times the young person themselves with questionnaires that look in fine detail what other symptoms might be being presented. This information on its own is not diagnostic, but does contribute to the overall understanding of what might be getting in the way of the student’s learning and well being. It is within the scope of such an assessment to also diagnose ADHD utilising our clinical interview, questionnaire and observation data alongside our information about the child’s learning. Autism is a more pervasive and complex diagnosis and screening in this context will lead to a conversation about whether further specific assessment ought to be done. Sometimes screening may be used to rule out further investigation.
Hopefully this might help to clarify some of the reasons why your child may have been referred for assessment and what the potential outcomes may be. If you are thinking of getting your child assessed, it can be helpful to note down for yourself what you questions you are hoping to answer (based on yours or others thoughts) and what you hope to be the consequences of the completed assessment. Having this clear in your mind can help to ensure that you and your child’s assessing psychologist are on the same page.