Testing Services:
Types of Psychological Testing Offered:
A personalized battery of assessment measures is created for each child or adolescent based on the referral question. Common reasons for referral include children having behavioral, emotional or academic difficulties, or to learn more about a child’s intellectual or emotional functioning. Some of the general categories of testing are described below.
Neuropsychological Testing – A neuropsychological evaluation is a comprehensive investigation into several domains of an individual’s functioning.
The evaluation generally begins with an assessment of cognitive abilities, including verbal and perceptual reasoning, visual-motor development, attention capacity, executive functions, memory, and language. Equipped with a map of underlying cognitive abilities, we next investigate an individual’s academic achievement in reading, oral language, writing, and math. The links between cognitive capacities and academic skills help us to understand where and why an individual demonstrates strengths and weaknesses.
To round out a comprehensive picture, we assess an individual’s social and emotional functioning as well. Together, these domains inform each individual’s unique profile and allow for targeted recommendations to help each client succeed.
Cognitive Testing – This type of evaluation is often used to assess intellectual functioning, or when there are learning problems that need to be further explored.
This type of evaluation can provide an IQ, which is an indicator of a client’s cognitive abilities. An IQ score can provide information about general cognitive abilities, as well as strengths and weaknesses in the cognitive domain. IQ is one component of assessing for mental retardation and can be one component of assessing for learning disabilities as well.
Achievement testing can provide information about the grade level on which a client is functioning in certain areas reading writing, mathematics, and oral language.
Personality Testing – This type of evaluation is often used for clarification of diagnosis or to gain a more in depth understanding of a child or adolescent’s emotional functioning.
This type of testing can also help identify areas to target in the therapeutic work, as well as provide information about the client’s way of processing information, self-concept, interpersonal styles, emotional regulation and defensive patterns.