Any Ep's or people who are familiar with EP assesments?

[paranoid2]

Hi I have a DS who was seen by an educational psychologist in June 2008 when he was just 7 yrs old The test that was used was the WISC. The results were pretty much inconclusive as he was extremely inattentive and fidgety and appeared very uncomfortable. It was also his birthday and his mind was elsewhere which didn?t help.At the time his scores were very varied but all below average but she said he may be capable of more. However he was moved to a special unit attached to mainstream and is very happy there. He has a statement. Subsequently he has been put on medication which has improved his levels of concentration but he still struggles with language and auditory processing

Now at aged 9 ¾ the school want to bring in an EP to do another assessment on him. His teacher who has a very good understanding of his difficulties and his needs feels that his language/auditory processing problems are creating a barrier to his learning and would like to secure a better understanding of exactly what is causing his difficulties so that he can receive further help. She says that there is a significant gap between what he actually knows and applying what he knows. He is miles ahead of the other children in his class in terms of knowing his maths facts and knows all his multiplication and division tables /adding/subtraction but he has difficulty in processing mental maths problems. Last November when he was 9.4yrs he had a reading age of 10.6, and also ahead of his age in terms of spellings. However he has some difficulty with comprehension and drawing inferences from stories. He has scored ahead of his age with non verbal reasoning tests in school but struggles with verbal reasoning.

My understanding is that the WISC is very much a language based IQ and may not show the true potential of a child with language processing problems. I would like to have the WISC completed to show where his difficulties lie but I also think it would be good to do a non verbal test also. Does anyone know much about this and if so what tests are out there. I am aware that my request may not be listened to (although the school have agreed to ask) but if only the WISC is completed I am thinking of seeking a private evaluation to supplement the school one

Thanks

Has your son got a formal dx of anything? Can't help, but am in similar position as waiting for our EP assessment in April. My son is 7 and has adhd. I would be interested to know exactly what an EP assessment consists of. We are having to pay for it privately as school do not feel he is 'severe' enough to warrant the expense of using an local authority EP

Well he has a vague diagnosis of DAMP which is a mixture of motor problems and attention problems (deficits in attention, motor and perception). However I'm not convinced anymore that this diagnosis is sufficient any longer and neither does the school. WE had a EP assessment 2 years ago. The EP came to the school. spent a morning with DS and then spoke to his teacher. He did the WISC test which tests a lot of different areas. A few days afterwards the EP came to our home to discuss findings and we got a report a few weeks later.

About half the tests in the WISC assess verbal skills and half non-verbal skills.

Thanks for your response. I had read (and I'm aware that i shouldnt believe all I read) that the WISC, although provides subscores in both nonverbal and verbal reasoning, it still relies quite heavily on language skills compared with others such as the Stanford Binet text. However I defer to others that know more than me in this area

Paranoid what about posting this on Special Needs Children or SEN boards .... they'd probably have more experience of EP's on there

I'm an EP. The WISC has verbal and nonverbal elements, although the non-verbal aspects rely on understanding verbal instructions. The WISC has several subscales including verbal comrehension, working memory and processing speed. Discrepancies on these can give a good idea of the child's strengths and difficulties in some areas of cognition and can pick out particular difficulties such as working memory or comprehension difficulties. Otherwise they can be 'patchy' and a bit confusing (especially if the child has something else on their mind or wants to get out for playtime!)

I don't know anything about Stanford Binet. BAS is no less verbal than WISC, but I do know of one test which does not rely on verbal input (often used for children with children who don't speak English or children with hearing impairment), it's got a Dutch name and it escapes me I'm afraid. Hope that helps a little though.

Thanks for your help. I guess without a birthday party on his mind he may focus better. I think in order to get a true picure of DS' potential an Ep would have to move in for a week! He can vary so much in his ability to demonstrate what he knows. Things he seems to know well one day can evade him the next if he is distracted by something or feels under pressure to come up with an answer. According to his teacher he can be like a rabbit in the headlights