Psychometric Testing for children 6-16 years

Dr Catherine Chudleigh, Clinical Psychologist at Southside Health & Wellbeing, offers psychometric testing for children aged 6-16 years. Catherine has extensive experience working clinically with children and families, and has a particular interest and experience in psychometric testing for children and adolescents.

IQ and academic testing can provide important information about a child's cognitive strengths and weaknesses, academic needs, and preferred learning style. This can assist parents and children in making educational choices and implementing strategies to ensure that the child’s learning style is appropriately supported.

Specific reasons for testing include:

• Learning difficulties or delays (e.g.difficulties with spelling, writing, maths and/or reading)
• Giftedness
• Underachievement
• Emotional and/or behavioural problems presenting in the classroom and/or at home
• Admission to special educational programs (e.g., enrichment, extension and acceleration programs, entrance to selective high schools)
• Increasing understanding of a child’s learning style
• Concerns regarding possible attentional difficulties

What is IQ testing?

Intelligence testing is a method used by psychologists to measure a child's intellectual capabilities. Intellectual assessment is a good indicator of a child's academic potential. The results of an IQ test rank a child against a very large sample of children the same age.

Dr Chudleigh uses the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Forth Edition, Australian Standardisation (WISC-IV). This is an individually administered instrument for assessing the cognitive ability of children aged 6 years to 16 years. The WISC-IV is one of the most reliable and valid IQ testing instruments available and is the most widely used measure of IQ. The WISC-IV provides scores that represent intellectual functioning in four specified cognitive domains: Verbal Comprehension, Perceptual Reasoning, Processing Speed and Working Memory. The WISC-IV also provides a Full Scale IQ score measuring general intellectual ability.

During the testing session a child is asked to solve problems and puzzles and to answer a range of questions. Most children enjoy the testing session as it is an engaging process involving novel and fun tasks.

What is Academic Testing?

Academic testing provides an overview of a child’s current performance across a range of academic domains. Dr Chudleigh uses the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test (WIAT-II) with subtests including:

• Oral Expression
• Listening Comprehension
• Written Expression
• Spelling
• Pseudoword Decoding
• Word Reading
• Reading Comprehension
• Numerical Operations
• Maths Reasoning

The assessment provides a rich source of information about a child’s achievement skills, allowing the assessment of problem-solving ability by evaluating processing skills. This enables curriculum and intervention decisions to be made with confidence. Testing also allows a direct comparison of a child’s intellectual capabilities with his/her academic performance.

What is the Attentional Testing?

Attention is a vital component of the learning process, and different types of attentional difficulties have different implications for learning and intervention strategies.

The Test of Everyday Attention for Children (TEA-Ch) measures children’s abilities to:

• selectively attend
• sustain their attention
• divide attention between two tasks
• switch their attention from one task to another
• withhold (inhibit) verbal and motor responses

The Assessment Process

The assessment is conducted in several stages:

Initial Assessment Form: You will be provided with an initial assessment form to complete and return at least 7 days prior to your child’s appointment, which includes an overview of your child’s developmental, medical, psychological and academic history. You will also be provided with a parent report measure, The Strengths and Difficulties Scale, to return prior to return at or before the testing appointment.

Appointment(s):  A time is set to administer the WISC, as well as the WIAT and/or TEA-Ch if indicated. If the WISC is the only test to be used, testing will be completed in one session. If the WISC plus one additional test is being used, the tests may be completed in one session or across two sessions, depending on the needs of the individual child. If all three tests are to be administered two sessions will be required.

Report: Dr Chudleigh will prepare a comprehensive written report based on the outcome of the assessment and testing process. This report will be sent in a PDF document via email to the address provided, or by mail at request, within four (4) weeks of completion of the assessment. The report will highlight relative areas of strength and difficulty, with recommendations for home and school made and strategies provided for improving the child’s learning experience. 

Follow-up phone discussion: Dr Chudleigh will provide a 20-minute follow-up phone call to the child’s parent(s) to respond to any questions the parents may have regarding the report.

Assessment and Fee Structure:

Three testing options are available:

• Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children only = $600
• Weschler Intelligence Scale plus Weschler Individual Achievement Test= $750
• Weschler Intelligence Scale plus Test of Everyday Attention = $750
• Weschler Intelligence Scale, Weschler Individual Achievement Test plus Test of Everyday Attention= $900

The best testing option may be selected in consultation with your child’s paediatrician, school counsellor or psychologist, or by speaking with Dr Catherine Chudleigh prior to making an appointment.

Referrals: Please do not hesitate to speak to your therapist, our friendly reception staff, or contact us on 95792480 if you wish to make an appointment or obtain further information about this new service. Alternatively, please complete and send as an instant enquiry on our contact page.

Payment Plans: Payment plans are available for all testing procedures. Clients may elect to pay instalments across a one to two month period. Reports will not be released prior to receipt of full payment, unless the client has signed a credit card payment form authorising Southside Health & Wellbeing to process future payment instalments.

Private Health Fund Rebates: Rebates may be available for clients with “extras cover”. Clients are advised to check with their fund. Our HICAPS facility allows you to use the rebate at the time of the appointment. Each assessment session and parent feedback session will be billed individually. Each session may be eligible for a private health fund rebate.