Global Assessment FAQs

What should I expect from the glob­al evaluation?

A glob­al eval­u­a­tion usu­al­ly includes an inter­view with care­givers about the child’s his­to­ry, obser­va­tion of an inter­view with the child, and test­ing. Test­ing involves paper and pen­cil and hands-on activ­i­ties, answer­ing ques­tions, and some­times using a com­put­er. Your child will be meet­ing with a child psy­chol­o­gist, speech/​language pathol­o­gist, occu­pa­tion­al ther­a­pist, and test­ing tech­ni­cian. Care­givers may be asked to fill out ques­tion­naires about their child’s devel­op­ment and behav­ior. Care­givers are usu­al­ly not in the room dur­ing test­ing, although they may be present with very young chil­dren. The time required depends on the child’s age and prob­lem. Make sure your child has a good night’s sleep before the test­ing. If your child wears glass­es or a hear­ing aid or any oth­er device, make sure to bring it. If your child has spe­cial lan­guage needs, please alert the neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist to these. If your child is on stim­u­lant med­ica­tion, such as Rital­in, or oth­er med­ica­tion, check with the neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist before­hand about coor­di­nat­ing dosage time with test­ing. If your child has had pre­vi­ous school test­ing, an indi­vid­ual edu­ca­tion­al plan, or has relat­ed med­ical records, please bring this infor­ma­tion to your first appointment.

What should I tell my child about hav­ing an evaluation?

What you tell your child about this eval­u­a­tion depends on how much he or she can under­stand. Be sim­ple and brief and relate your expla­na­tion to a prob­lem that your child knows about such as ​“trou­ble with spelling,” ​“prob­lems fol­low­ing direc­tions,” or ​“feel­ing upset.” Some­times, the eas­i­est answer is to tell a child that we are try­ing to fig­ure out the way they learn best. Let them know that we will talk to their teach­ers to make sure that we are doing every­thing we can to make things eas­i­er for them in school. Reas­sure a wor­ried child that test­ing involves no ​“shots.” Tell your child that you are try­ing to under­stand his or her prob­lem to make things bet­ter. You may also tell the child that ​“nobody gets every ques­tion right,” and that the impor­tant thing is to ​“try your best.” Your child will prob­a­bly find the eval­u­a­tion inter­est­ing, and the detailed infor­ma­tion that is gath­ered will con­tribute to your child’s care.

What do you look at dur­ing the assessment?

A gen­er­al assess­ment may look at the fol­low­ing areas (this varies based on the child’s age and the refer­ral question):

• Gen­er­al intel­lec­tu­al func­tion­ing, look­ing at both non­ver­bal and ver­bal ways of learn­ing and how quick­ly they process information
• Aca­d­e­m­ic skills, such as read­ing, math, and spelling
• Exec­u­tive func­tion­ing skills, such as orga­ni­za­tion, abil­i­ty to mul­ti-task, plan­ning, inhi­bi­tion, and flexibility
• Atten­tion
• Over­all learn­ing and memory
• Lan­guage
• Visu­al-motor skills
• Motor coor­di­na­tion
• Behav­ioral, social, and emo­tion­al functioning

Some abil­i­ties may be mea­sured in more detail than oth­ers, depend­ing on the child’s needs. A detailed devel­op­men­tal his­to­ry and data from the child’s teacher may also be obtained. Observ­ing your child to under­stand his or her moti­va­tion, coop­er­a­tion, and behav­ior is a very impor­tant part of the eval­u­a­tion. Emerg­ing skills can be assessed in very young chil­dren. How­ev­er, the eval­u­a­tion of infants and preschool chil­dren is usu­al­ly short­er in dura­tion, because the child has not yet devel­oped as many skills.

Why is hav­ing a prop­er diag­no­sis important?

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, many chil­dren today are mis­di­ag­nosed. Hav­ing a prop­er diag­no­sis is crit­i­cal for deter­min­ing appro­pri­ate treat­ment. For exam­ple, you do not want to be treat­ing a child for ADHD when they real­ly are hav­ing prob­lems pay­ing atten­tion dur­ing read­ing because of a Learn­ing Dis­or­der in Read­ing. You do not want to just pro­vide a child with speech ther­a­py if the under­ly­ing issue is autism when they would then ben­e­fit from oth­er forms of treat­ment. Hav­ing a prop­er diag­no­sis is the first step to deter­min­ing appro­pri­ate inter­ven­tions for your child. That is why we use proven, sci­en­tif­ic meth­ods for teas­ing apart your child’s strengths and weak­ness­es. Our goal is to make sure that your child is receiv­ing the sup­port they need to live up to their potential.

What will the results tell me about my child?

• We com­pare your child’s test scores to scores of chil­dren of sim­i­lar ages to cre­ate a pro­file of your child’s strengths and weak­ness­es. We can then use these results to help your child in a num­ber of ways:
• Test­ing can explain why your child is hav­ing prob­lems at school. For exam­ple, a child may appear inat­ten­tive at school due to a lan­guage prob­lem, learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties, anx­i­ety, or a whole host of oth­er rea­sons. A child may have dif­fi­cul­ty read­ing due to a lan­guage dis­or­der or a read­ing dis­abil­i­ty. Test­ing not only helps to sort out these some­what com­plex issues but then guides the inter­ven­tion in a way that draws upon your child’s strengths. We can iden­ti­fy what skills your child needs to work on, as well as the best strate­gies that will help your child.
• Test­ing can help detect the effects of devel­op­men­tal, neu­ro­log­i­cal, and med­ical prob­lems, such as epilep­sy, autism, atten­tion deficit hyper­ac­tiv­i­ty dis­or­der (ADHD), dyslex­ia, or a genet­ic dis­or­der. Test­ing may be done to obtain a base­line against which to mea­sure the out­come of treat­ment or the child’s devel­op­ment over time.
• Dif­fer­ent child­hood dis­or­ders result in spe­cif­ic pat­terns of strengths and weak­ness­es. These pro­files of abil­i­ties can help iden­ti­fy a child’s dis­or­der and the brain areas that are involved. For exam­ple, test­ing can help dif­fer­en­ti­ate between an atten­tion deficit and depres­sion or deter­mine whether a lan­guage delay is due to a prob­lem in pro­duc­ing speech, under­stand­ing or express­ing lan­guage, social shy­ness, autism, or cog­ni­tive delay.
• Most impor­tant­ly, test­ing pro­vides a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the child’s behav­ior and learn­ing in school, at home, and in the com­mu­ni­ty. The eval­u­a­tion can guide teach­ers, ther­a­pists, and you to bet­ter help your child achieve his or her potential.

How does a glob­al assess­ment dif­fer from a school assessment?

School assess­ments are usu­al­ly per­formed to deter­mine whether a child qual­i­fies for spe­cial edu­ca­tion pro­grams or ther­a­pies to enhance school per­for­mance. They focus on achieve­ment and skills need­ed for aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess. How in-depth your school assess­ment will be is com­plete­ly depen­dent on the school. We can work with you to incor­po­rate any find­ings from the school into a com­pre­hen­sive report that will also assist with edu­ca­tion­al planning.

What are some of the dis­or­ders that clin­ic often sees?

The major­i­ty of chil­dren are referred for an assess­ment because some­one (their par­ents or teacher) sus­pects that they have an atten­tion prob­lem. While some chil­dren do have atten­tion dif­fi­cul­ties, some have prob­lems sus­tain­ing their atten­tion due to a learn­ing dis­or­der, lan­guage dif­fi­cul­ties, behav­ioral prob­lems, depres­sion, anx­i­ety, or oth­er issues.

There is no ​“typ­i­cal” case, how­ev­er, the fol­low­ing are a list of child­hood dis­or­ders that we often diagnose:

• Atten­tion Deficit/​Hyperactivity Disorder
• Child­hood Depression
• Anx­i­ety Dis­or­ders, includ­ing Post-Trau­mat­ic Stress Dis­or­der and Obses­sive Com­pul­sive Disorder
• Learn­ing Disorders
• Behav­ior Disorders
• Issues sur­round­ing speech/​language and motor control
• Autism and oth­er Per­va­sive Devel­op­men­tal Disorders
• Men­tal Retardation
• Eat­ing Disorders
• Adjust­ment Dis­or­ders relat­ed to changes in the child’s envi­ron­ment (parental divorce, mov­ing, school changes, birth of a sib­ling, etc) In extreme­ly rare cas­es, chil­dren could meet cri­te­ria for Bipo­lar Dis­or­der or Schizophrenia.

This list is not meant to include all pos­si­ble dis­or­ders that the clin­ic is trained to diag­nose or eval­u­ate, but includes the most com­mon issues.

In some cas­es, chil­dren may not meet diag­nos­tic criteria.

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