Psychological Assessments for Children

A comprehensive understanding of intellectual strengths and weaknesses enables the child to develop and improve and excel their skills. A comprehensive psychoeducational assessment report helps both the school and parents to structure educational programs that best cater for the child or young person’s learning, developmental, social and emotional needs.

The difference between cognitive ability and achievement is important to understand in a way that can help the pupil to work at their optimum level of ability with support and encouragement from families and their school environment.

This assessment can specifically define both your child’s strengths and his areas of weakness, allowing the strengths to be amplified and the weaknesses to be targeted and overcome. For many children, having a psycho-educational assessment performed is the first step toward not only securing a diagnosis, but also accessing a range of timely interventions and support programs.

Psychological assessments are an intensive process, requiring interviews, the input of parents, teachers, and the child, one-on-one testing sessions, and observations. Once an assessment is complete you will be provided with a complete report detailing your child’s abilities and needs.

Children may face challenges at certain tasks or socially at school from time to time. Academic skills wise, it completely normal for a child to struggle with certain areas such as math. From a social skills perspective, it’s also normal for children to have difficulty socially and behaviourally.

If the child has difficulty continually in certain areas despite classroom accommodations or help being provided, it would likely be valuable to seek out a psychological assessment. Additionally, some signs that your child would probably benefit from a psychological assessment include a worsening attitude toward school (e.g. a loss of interest in school, or thinking they are “bad at school”), disruptive behaviour in class, and/or difficulty to learn basic intellectual, social, or behavioural skills (in accordance with their age group).

Understanding different psychological tools available can help you understand what areas of a child can be assessed and where help can be offered:

What are the common psychological assessments?

The assessment carried out by our team depends on child’s presenting symptoms and the management is tailored to each child’s individual needs. The following is a list of abilities that is commonly assessed at our center:

  • Full scale IQ testing (Verbal memory, Visual memory, Visual perception, Visual-motor integration (such as eye-hand coordination, writing)
  • Attention, Executive functions (such as planning, organizational skills), Processing speed
  • Academic skills
  • Behavioral and emotional functioning

What is Psychoeducational assessment (Academic Assessment)?

A psychoeducational assessment can identify learning challenges in students of all ages, from young children to adults.

Psychoeducational assessment is a detailed assessment of a child's psychological and academic skills. It involves conducting specialized tests and task that assess:

  • Memory
  • Learning
  • Attention/ concentration
  • Planning/Executive Functioning
  • Reading (phonetic skills,reading comprehension)
  • Spelling/Writing
  • Mathematics
  • Academic fluency (speed of reading, writing, calculating)
  • Listening comprehension
  • Oral expressive skills

The specific aspects of psychoeducational testing will depend on the presenting problem and additional tests are sometimes required.

Assessment Tools for Psychoeducational Testing:

We commonly use the following cognitive assessment tools:

  • WI Range Achievement Test 3
  • Woodcock Reading Mastery Test NU-REVISED
  • Key Math Diagnostic Arithmetic Test-NU
  • Matching Familiar Figure Test
  • Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement (KTEA-II)

What is Psycho-diagnostic Assessment?

Psycho diagnostic testing is used to help diagnose and clarify concerns regarding behavior, personality traits, mood, emotional functioning, and cognitive processes. When there is a suspicion that child may have behavioral or developmental disorder that can include, ADD/ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, which was previously undiagnosed.

Assessment Tools used in Psycho-diagnostic assessment:

We commonly use the following cognitive assessment tools:

  • Disc Assessment
  • Taylor-Johnson Temperament Analysis
  • DASS (psychology)
  • Beck Depression Inventory
  • Childhood Autism Rating Scale
  • Conners
  • Adaptive Behavior Assessment system
  • Bayley III, Nepsy II,
  • ABC Movement,
  • Portage Guide for Early Education

What is Cognitive Assessment (IQ Assessment)?

Cognitive assessments or intelligence tests are used to determine a child’s learning capability by identifying their cognitive strengths and weaknesses. When interpreted in combination with comprehensive background information, parent and teachers’ interviews, the results of cognitive tests can provide a profile which can assist with the development of individualized intervention and learning plans for children.

Cognitive assessments with children require the administration of standardized psychometric tools by experienced and accredited psychologists. These tools can assess various areas of cognitive capacity, for example:

  • Verbal Comprehension: the ability to use a range of vocabulary to understand and express general knowledge and explain concepts
  • Visual Spatial: the ability to evaluate visual details and understand visual spatial relationships
  • Fluid Reasoning: the ability to use conceptual information from visual details and apply that knowledge
  • Working Memory: the ability to learn, manipulate and retain information to complete new tasks
  • Processing Speed: the ability to quickly process and make judgements about visual information

What are the Assessment Tools for Cognitive assessment?

We commonly use the following cognitive assessment tools:

  • Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children – Fifth Edition (WISC-V, UK Standard) for children aged 6 to 16 years.
  • Stanford-Binet – Fifth Edition (Early SB5) for children aged 2 to 7 years.
  • Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence – Fourth Edition (WPPSI-IV, UK Standard) for children aged 2 years and 6 months to 7 years and 7 months.
  • Woodcock–Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities

Pulse Therapy & Learning Center, Umm Suqeim 1

Pulse Therapy and Learning Center is a therapy and professional training center in Umm Suqeim, Dubai. Pulse Center addresses various conditions such as learning difficulties, motor delays, speech difficulties, autism, dyslexia, dyscalculia, ADHD, emotional and behavioral difficulties.