Psychoeducational vs. Neuropsychological Evaluation
If your child has been referred for a psychoeducational evaluation, you are likely noticing differences, delays, or problems at school. The goal of a psychoeducational evaluation is to evaluate intellectual functioning and academic functioning. Foundational language skills (e.g., phonological processing, verbal retrieval and fluency) may also be evaluated because weaknesses can contribute to a learning disorder (e.g., Dyslexia).
In contrast, psychoeducational testing is only part of the neuropsychological evaluation. In addition to intellectual and academic functioning, the neuropsychological evaluation often assesses any combination of skills related to learning, memory, attention, executive functioning, visual processing, verbal skills, fine motor skills, adaptive functioning, and psychosocial functioning.
If your child has a medical condition that affects brain development, a neuropsychological evaluation is the gold standard for accurately describing a complex profile. Furthermore, the results need to be compared to what is known about others with the same medical history (and not just other children the same age), which requires the expertise of a neuropsychologist.
Regardless of whether your child does or does not have a medical condition, assessment of just intellectual and academic functioning may not reveal the reasons for challenges at school. And if you don’t understand the reasons behind learning differences, it’s tough to know how to help your child.
Here are some questions that may need to be explored during the evaluation for your child:
- Were there disruptions to academic instruction and for how long (e.g., virtual learning that was not a good fit, frequent absences)?
- Do weak verbal or nonverbal cognitive skills explain learning challenges?
- Are problems with distractibility, focus, and/or concentration affecting learning?
- How does your child approach a learning task? What strategies do they use?
- Do problems with forgetfulness, initiation, organization, planning and more (i.e., executive functioning) get in the way of their ability to “show” what they know?
- Are symptoms of worry, anxiety, depressed mood, or stress affecting learning? What about bullying or social stressors?
- Are there significant concerns about sleep or nutrition that could be affecting learning?
- Are there biological family members with a history of learning differences (i.e., learning disorders are heritable)?
- If your child receives appropriate accommodations for deficits related to their medical condition, would they make better progress at school? Can we level the playing field?
If you believe that your child could benefit from a neuropsychological evaluation, email us for a free phone consultation so we can answer your questions: [email protected]
