Psychoeducational Evaluation
Reasons to consider a psychooeducational evaluation:
- Your child is struggling in school.
You suspect your child has a disability (such as learning disability, dyslexia, ADHD).
To determine if your child is gifted.
- To determine if your child is eligible for test accommodations.
- To obtain individualized intervention recommendations for supporting academic improvement at home and at school.
- To obtain a detailed profile of your child's strength and weaknesses.
What is a psychoeducational evaluation?
A psychoeducational evaluation involves examining a child's cognitive, academic, and behavioral skills and analyzing how these factors impact a child's performance in school. The evaluation will include a detailed social history and clinical interview, review of school and medical records, and a comprehensive battery of tests. The tests administered will focus on your child's performance in school and the different factors that may be impacting their performance.
A psychoeducational evaluation consists of three types of assessments: cognitive, academic, and behavior.
Cognitive assessments (also known as IQ tests) examines different abilities and skills. Most of these abilities and skills are things that are innate and are not learned throughout the lifetime.
Some of the abilities or skills that will be examined are: Memory (short-term, working, long-term), Processing Speed, Verbal Skills, Nonverbal skills (Reasoning), Auditory Processing, and Executive Functioning.
When assessing memory skills there are three types of memory that may be assessed. Short-term memory is the capacity for holding, but not manipulating a small amount of information in a short period of time. Working memory is the ability to hold and manipulate information for a short period of time. Long-term memory is the storage of information over a long period of time.
Processing Speed assesses one's ability to automatically and fluently perform relatively easy or over-learned tasks. Attention and concentration often impacts one's processing speed.
Verbal skills are one of the few cognitive skills that is impacted by one's education. Verbal skills assess one's mastery of acquired knowledge.
Nonverbal or reasoning skills assesses one's ability to solve novel problems and interpret or manipulate visual information. Nonverbal tests often have little to no language skills involved.
Auditory Processing assesses one's ability to process and interpret sounds.
Executive Functioning assesses many different processes, such as attentional control, working memory, planning, flexibility, time management, and organization.
Achievement or academic testing measures skills and knowledge that have been acquired in school. Achievement tests measure reading, math, writing, and oral language skills.
Reading assessments measure: decoding, accuracy, rate, and comprehension. Some of the assessments analyze an individual's performance under a time limit to determine whether their reading fluency and comprehension is impacted by a time restraint.
Math assessments analyze different math skills, such as computation and math word problems.
Writing assessments measure different writing componenets. Some of the components measured are spelling of words and spelling of sounds, sentence writing, essay writing, editing, and punctuation.
Oral Language assesses ones ability to comprehend and understand language, vocabulary, word knowledge, grammatical knowledge, and phonological skills.
Behavioral assessments are used to identify a wide range of behaviors. Depending on the referral concern, the following behaviors may be assessed: anxiety, depression, aggression, inattention, hyperactivity, withdrawal, leadership, social skills, adaptive skills, and daily living skills.
These behaviors can be assessed by self-report, teacher report, and/or parent report.