Services
Psychoeducational Assessment
What is an assessment?
Comprehensive testing brings about diagnostic clarity and is used to enhance a child’s learning environment. When faced with concerns regarding an individuals' performance in school, or the workplace, psychoeducational testing may be warranted. For a child, a thorough assessment may include review of school records, medical records, and collateral interviews with teachers, school counselors, or your child's pediatrician.
Psychoeducational testing can also help college or graduate school students, who may be struggling academically with continuing issues, or help adults to determine whether they have a learning disability or ADHD that may have gone undiagnosed in childhood.
Additionally, a therapist or psychologist may request an assessment to gain diagnostic clarity on a variety of mental health concerns.
What will you learn from a psychoeducational assessment?
Depending on the referral question and the needs of the client, a person typically can learn about their specific learning style, academic strengths and weaknesses, executive functioning skills, memory, reasoning and problem-solving abilities, motor skills, sensory-perceptual functioning, and visual- perceptual functioning, IQ and academic achievement. Additionally, a person can also learn about how their learning impacts their emotional wellbeing.
What can an assessment diagnose?
They can be used to diagnose learning disabilities, such as Reading Disorder/Dyslexia, Disorder of Written Expression/Dysgraphia, Math Disorder/Dyscalculia and Auditory Processing Disorder. Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and or other executive functioning deficits. Additionally, they can be used to understand social/emotional functioning and clarify mental health diagnoses.
What can I expect during testing?
Testing will typically begin with an interview to gather information regarding history of problems and to help establish a battery of tests. Once the questions have been identified, testing generally occurs over three session of approximately three hours each. Result time varies based on scheduling and collateral involvement with physicians, teachers or other family members.
What type of accommodations will I receive?
Accommodations will depend on the individual person and results of such assessments can be used for an IEP or 504 plan. Some examples of accommodations include receiving extra time, separate testing conditions, additional breaks, changes in the format of a test, receiving notes ahead of time, or recordings of lectures etc.