A cognitive assessment measures an individual’s general thinking and reasoning abilities and overall intellectual functioning
Cognitive Assessments
A cognitive assessment measures an individual’s general thinking and reasoning abilities and overall intellectual functioning. The results are determined by assessing a combination of processes that are involved in almost every aspect of a person’s daily life. Cognitive abilities tend to remain stable throughout an individual’s life. If difficulties are present academically or with engaging effectively in work, a cognitive assessment may be valuable.
We provide the cognitive assessments below to help understand intellectual functioning and to provide clients with a profile of a person’s cognitive strengths and difficulties. This can be most useful when considering whether or not a full educational assessment is needed.
We do not undertake full educational assessments to diagnose specific learning difficulties (dyslexia) for exams or for EHCP applications or appeals. For this service we recommend you instruct an Educational Psychologist.
Individuals aged 16+
The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale - Fourth UK Edition (WAIS-IV UK) provides the most advanced measure of cognitive ability for adults. It may be used as a standalone measure to identify cognitive strengths and weaknesses by providing the Full Scale IQ and interpretable T Scores for the following indexes:
Verbal comprehension: understanding verbal information, thinking in words and expressing thoughts in words
Perceptual reasoning: ability to organise and reason with visual information, and to solve visual problems
Working memory: ability to retain and manipulate verbal information
Processing speed: ability to scan, process and identify information accurately.
Individuals aged 6 to 15 years 11 months
The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children® Fifth Edition (WISC®-V) provides an overall measure of general cognitive ability, as well as measuring intellectual functioning in:
Verbal Comprehension (VC)
Perceptual Reasoning (PR)
Working Memory (WM)
Processing Speed (PS).
This assessment can be beneficial alongside a neuro-developmental diagnostic assessment to better highlight cognitive strengths and difficulties that may impact on a young persons ability to access the academic curriculum. Schools may use this information to develop their own specific plan of how they may better support a young person.
FAQs
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A cognitive assessment will help provide a learning profile, including strengths and difficulties.
Comparing to a standardised sample a cognitive assessment can help identify learning difficulties and needs.
The assessment is most useful in situations where individuals are curious as to whether or not a learning difficulty exists and if they will need to instruct an educational psychologist in the future.
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Our cognitive assessments will provide support towards whether an application for an EHCP assessment is appropriate but is unlikely to be sufficient on its own to secure an EHCP or be sufficient at an appeal stage.
Successful EHCP’s require detailed evidence of a young person’s learning needs and further assessments are usually administered by an Educational Psychologist.
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For young person’s seeking support and reasonable adjustments with exams, awarding bodies have a duty under the Equality Act 2010 to make ‘reasonable adjustments. Approved assessments evidenced in a specific report format must be submitted by a certain deadline each academic year.
Our cognitive assessment is one of the approved assessments but will not be sufficient alone to provide the evidence required. You will need to instruct an educational psychologist who can administer further assessments and prepare the appropriate report.
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We recommend before considering a cognitive assessment to contact a Case Manager to discuss your individual requirements as different professional bodies often have different requirements.