What type of battery of neuropsychological tests do you do on children?
What type of battery of neuropsychological tests do you
do on children?
So from a neuropsych standpoint, if I am going to do a
full neuropsych battery, my professional opinion is that
the norms out there for neuropsych for kids, I do not
feel comfortable doing a neuropsych on a child until
they are 8 years old, because I just I am not confident
in the norms for kids younger than that. There are norms
out there, there are people who do that, you know that
works for them, they have the education and training,
but what my training is, I feel like from 8 on up, I
will do the neuropsych. So what's the typical neuropsych
for a child. It would be a probably a full IQ, so look
at verbal abilities, nonverbal abilities, working
memory, attention and concentration, processing speed,
those types of things, visual motor skills, so taking
information, producing a response on paper visually,
memory, so looking at verbal memory, visual memory,
again attention and concentration is a part of that,
recall, recognition, all of those things. Attention and
concentration is another test that looks solely at that,
executive functioning, you know so planning sequencing,
organizing, problem solving, and all of those types of
things and also including social emotional aspects as
well and if need be if we need do an academic tutor for
that and to look at learning disabilities we will do
that. You know you can't diagnose a learning disability
off of just a brief IQ and a brief academic, you have to
have a full IQ test and a full academic. So usually what
I do if I have a child who there is concerns for
attention and concentration problems, I will typically
do a screener for IQ and a screener for academic to see
and then also look at attention issues and if the child
is ADHD, we will treat that first, then bring the child
back if we need to do further testing at that time to
see what else is going on with him then we have a full
IQ, a full academic to look at learning disabilities, or
to look at any other type of cognitive problems that
might be occurring. Of course we look at social
emotional functioning as well within that, but the
reason is that if you test a child who has attention
issues and give them a full IQ and full academic test,
you think they are going to pay attention, you think you
are going to get valid results, it isn't going to
happen, so you know what you do is you screen to see
what you got and then if you got the treat attention
issues, you treat that, then bring him back and go from
there, that’s just a more conservative approach and it
is the approach that I just take with the patients, I
feel I can get better results.
