New Clinical Assessments From Pearson Help Psychologists Gain Deeper Insights Into How a Child Learns
New York, NY (PRWEB) October 13, 2015 -- To provide school, clinical and neuropsychologists with deeper insights into how a child learns, Pearson today unveiled the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children® Fifth Edition, Integrated (WISC-V Integrated). The new WISC-V Integrated helps psychologists to specifically identify the cognitive processes that contribute to a child’s performance on the leading cognitive assessment for school-age children, the WISC-V, locate the origins of any difficulties, and offer suitable intervention recommendations.
Rooted in neuropsychological theory and the process approach, which focus on qualitative measures of cognitive functioning and behavior, the WISC-V Integrated is the latest addition to the Wechsler suite of intelligence tests developed by American psychologist David Wechsler, Ph.D. The WISC-V Integrated is also based on the work of Edith Kaplan, Ph.D., who pioneered and articulated the process approach to neuropsychological testing.
Launched one year ago, the WISC-V is the most powerful cognitive ability measure for children ages 6:0-16:11. The WISC-V Integrated builds on the WISC-V to help clinicians understand the why behind a child’s WISC-V performance.
Licensed psychologist Patricia W. Collins, Ph.D., is a faculty member at North Carolina State University as well as a staff member in the university’s Psychoeducational Clinic which provides support services for children, adolescents and learners of all ages, focusing on assessment of learning, memory and attention. For Collins, the WISC-IV Integrated has been her "go to" when sorting out complex client cases so that she can provide the most targeted interventions, and she is looking forward to using the WISC-V Integrated in her practice.
She said, “I depend on the WISC-IV Integrated to help tease out the various processes that feed into a learner’s performance on a complex task. This more precise understanding of specific measures then contributes to deeper insights into the overall pattern of individual strengths and challenges. As a result, I am better able to design the most appropriate intervention strategies.”
In addition, she uses the WISC-IV Integrated as a teaching tool with her graduate students. “It helps them to understand that a score is not just a score—that performance on a task can be affected by multiple processes,” said Collins. “This is often their first understanding that there is more to a score than simply the number attached to it.”
The professional career of Susan Valero, a school psychologist with nearly 40 years of experience, has spanned all age ranges of students as well as a wide variety of clinical settings, including a day treatment facility, self-contained classrooms and individual schools. Valero uses the WISC-V and said that it has been a valuable tool for assessing student eligibility for disability services and gifted education.
Like Collins, she looks forward to the release of the WISC-V Integrated. In a previous position, Valero used the WISC-IV Integrated and found it an indispensable tool for targeted assessment. She used it frequently with the English language learners and students she suspected of having language difficulties. In addition, the subtests in the WISC-IV Integrated provided Valero with a powerful tool for specifically identifying areas where students have cognitive or other impairments and determining appropriate interventions.
“Dr. Collins and Ms. Valero are illustrative of the thousands of psychologists and other clinicians in diverse settings around the country who rely on the WISC to garner insights into how a child learns,” said Aurelio Prifitera, Ph.D., managing director of Pearson’s clinical assessment group. “We developed the WISC-V Integrated to provide them with an even deeper understanding of how cognitive processes impact learning so that they can locate the specific causes of any difficulties, determine targeted interventions and help put their students and clients on the path to success, both academically and socially.”
The WISC-V Integrated:
• Offers a range of subtests and allows psychologists to choose the ones that will help them answer referral questions
• Provides adapted and varied versions of WISC-V subtests to help better explain WISC-V performance and assess children with special needs
• Provides measures that expand working memory construct coverage and demonstrate domain-specific functioning of working memory—critical to providing intervention recommendations
• Measures verbal comprehension ability for children with expressive language issues
• Allows psychologists to refine and test hypotheses about why a child may have difficulty in a specific cognitive area
Many WISC-V Integrated subtests are linked to subtests from the WISC-V. Depending on the child’s WISC-V performance and other available results and information, psychologists can select one or more of the subtests from the WISC-V Integrated assessment.
The WISC-V can be scored with Q-global®, Pearson’s web-based scoring and reporting system, accessible from any computer connected to the Internet. Q-Global scoring for the WISC-V Integrated will be available in December 2015. In addition, Q-global allows psychologists to generate comparisons between scores from the WISC-V scores and the WISC-V Integrated subtests.
About Pearson
Pearson is the world’s leading learning company, with 40,000 employees in more than 80 countries working to help people of all ages to make measurable progress in their lives through learning. Pearson’s clinical assessment group provides sensory, motor, and development instruments for occupational and physical therapists and related clinicians to help develop insights that support evaluations and shape treatment plans. For more information about Pearson’s clinical assessments, visit http://www.pearsonclinical.com.
Laura Howe, Pearson, http://www.pearson.com, +1 (800) 745-8489, [email protected]
Share this article