Education LawDr. Judith Silver
Institute 2001Psychologist

Psychological Tests

Intelligence Tests

Wechsler Intelligence Scales

Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scales of Intelligence- Revised (WPPSI-R)

ages 3-7

Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children (WISC-III)

ages 6-16

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale- Revised WAIS-R

ages 16-adult

The Wechsler Scales give verbal, performance and full scale IQ scores. The WISC-III in addition to the above scores gives scores in the following four areas:

verbal comprehension score

perceptual organization

processing speed

freedom from distractibility

Stanford-Binet (ages 2-adult) the test of choice for students functioning at the two extremes (retarded and gifted)

The Stanford-Binet yields a composite score which is based on the following four area scores:

verbal comprehension

abstract/visual reasoning

quantitative reasoning

short-term memory

Infant and toddler assessment tools such as the Bailey and the McCarthy Scales evaluate a child's physical development (gross and fine motor), language development (receptive and expressive) and social development.

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Projective and Personality Tests

These tests are used to assess emotional and social functioning. The most commonly administered tests are:

Rorschach
Children's Apperception Test (CAT)
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
House-Tree-Person (H-T-P)
kinetic Family Drawing
Clinical Interview
Sentence Completion

Adaptive Functioning

An adaptive behavior assessment is geared to evaluating how a child functions in the areas of self-help and daily living skills.

Adaptive Behavior functioning is usually assessed by having a child's parent and/or teacher complete detailed questionnaires.
The Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale is the most commonly used measure of adaptive behavior.

If a student is suspected of being retarded, or if his/her performance falls 1.5 standard deviations below the mean on a standard intelligence test, an adaptive behavior assessment must be conducted. If a child's adaptive functioning is in the normal range, he/she cannot be classified as mentally retarded.

Perceptual Motor/Graphomotor Functioning

This area is most commonly assessed with the use of the Bender Gestalt test. This test requires copying nine geometric designs that are presented one at a time.

A standard psychological test battery is typically comprised of:

An intellectual assessment. The Stanford-Binet or the Wechsler

Scales are the most frequently used measures.

An assessment of perceptual motor/graphomotor functioning

Personality Tests

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Neuropsychological Evaluation

A neuropsychological evaluation is a comprehensive assessment of thinking skills (cognition), behavior and emotional functioning. A neuropsychologist is usually a doctoral level psychologist with specialized training in the area of brain-behavior relationships. A neuropsychological evaluation assesses how a person learns.

Developmental neuropsychology is a relatively new field that
assesses the structural and functional development of the brain with respect to reading and writing acquisition. The develop-
mental neuropsychology perspective is based on the integration of biological and educational approaches. Developmental neuropsychology deals primarily with the struggle to acquire function.

The following developmental functions are the main areas assessed in a neuropsychological evaluation.

ATTENTION AND INTENTION

Attention is the ability to concentrate and process the most important information and tune out irrelevant stimuli.

Intention is the ability to select activities within an array of available selections that are productive, as opposed to those that are non-productive.

SIMULTANEOUS PROCESSING AND SEQUENTIAL PROCESSING
Simultaneous processing is the ability to integrate and
synthesize many pieces of information and the same time.

Sequential Processing is the ability to process information

based on a series of sequences with one step leading to another.

MEMORY

Long-term memory is the ability to store information for a long period of time before retrieval is required.

Short-term memory is the ability to hold information for relatively short period of time before retrieval.

LANGUAGE

Receptive language (auditory comprehension) is the ability to hear and understand spoken language.

Expressive language is the ability to verbally communicate and use spoken language to convey one's thoughts, needs and feelings.

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HIGH ORDER COGNITION AND EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING
The ability to reason and to plan.

MOTOR IMPLEMENTATION
A motor skill is a function which involves precise movements
of muscles with the intent to perform a specific act.

New Tests often used as part of a neuropsychological test battery.

These tests assess intellectual ability as well as specific cognitive processing abilities. The tests are developed based on various cognitive processing models and assess skills in more depth than the WISC-III and the Stanford-Binet.

Differential Ability Scale (DAS)
ages 6- 17.11

Cognitive Ability System (CAS)
Das Naglieri
Ages 5-17

NEPSY- A Developmental Neuropsychological Assessment
Ages 5-12

Other commonly used assessment tools

Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement and Cognitive Ability
(often used in an educational evaluation)

Connors Rating Scale a questionnaire that is completed by a parent and teacher to help in diagnosing an attention deficit disorder.