Learning & Cognitive Assessments for Children & Young People

Yes. Dyslexia is commonly used to describe persistent difficulties particularly involving reading and decoding, often alongside difficulties with reading fluency and spelling.

Assessment for dyslexia sits within our Learning Assessment pathway and considers your child’s academic skills alongside their learning history, intervention and progress over time.

Yes. Dyscalculia is commonly used to describe significant and persistent difficulties learning and using mathematical skills.

These difficulties are considered within Specific Learning Disorder with impairment in mathematics.

Yes, but we first need to understand what difficulties you’re referring to.

Difficulties with spelling and written expression may be explored through a Psychology-led Learning Assessment. Difficulties with the physical process of handwriting may be better explored through an Occupational Therapy Handwriting Assessment.

Some children need assessment of both areas.

Yes. A child does not need to use spoken language to complete a cognitive assessment.

For children aged 4 years and older, we have access to the Wechsler Nonverbal Scale of Ability (WNV), a cognitive assessment designed to measure abilities with minimal reliance on spoken language.

A nonverbal cognitive assessment may be appropriate for children who are non-speaking or use few spoken words, as well as children whose language, hearing or communication differences mean that a traditional cognitive assessment may not provide the most useful picture of their abilities.

Your psychologist will consider your child’s age, communication, development and the purpose of the assessment when deciding which cognitive assessment is most appropriate. We can also adapt the way we support your child to participate while maintaining the requirements of the assessment.

For a comprehensive Learning Assessment, we will generally include a Cognitive Assessment alongside assessment of your child’s academic skills. This helps us understand your child’s academic results within the context of their broader thinking style and build a more complete picture of how they learn.

If your child has already completed a recent Cognitive Assessment, please send us the report. We can review the existing results and determine whether cognitive testing needs to be repeated (we don't like to repeat things unless absolutely necessary).

If you are booking a Cognitive Assessment on its own, academic assessment such as the WIAT is not routinely included. We would only recommend adding a Learning Assessment if there are also specific questions about your child’s reading, spelling, writing or mathematics.

They assess different things.

The WISC is a cognitive assessment that explores different areas of thinking and reasoning.

The WIAT is an academic achievement assessment that explores skills such as reading, spelling, writing and mathematics.

Depending on the assessment question, your child may complete one or both.

The WIAT gives us information about your child’s academic skills across areas such as reading, spelling, writing and mathematics.

Sometimes we need to explore a particular area in more detail. In these cases, your psychologist may recommend additional targeted assessment, such as the CTOPP or SPAT, to better understand very specific and isolated skills related to reading, spelling and phonological processing.

These assessments aren’t needed for every child. We’ll recommend them where they help us answer a specific question about your child’s learning.

School reports and classroom assessments give us important information about how your child is progressing within their curriculum and performing across their schoolwork.

The WIAT is an individually administered, standardised assessment that allows us to look more closely at particular academic skills.

For example, a school result for English may reflect many skills working together. The WIAT can help us look separately at areas such as word reading, decoding, reading comprehension, reading fluency, spelling and written expression. In mathematics, we can explore areas such as calculation, mathematical reasoning and fluency.

This can be particularly useful as children move through school and individual foundation skills may be less readily separated within their everyday schoolwork. At times, compensatory strategies can mask more foundational or underlying difficulties. 

We still use school reports and assessment information as an important part of the overall picture — the WIAT gives us different and more detailed information, rather than replacing what the school already knows about your child.

It’s possible for NAPLAN, school reports and classroom performance to tell slightly different stories about a child’s learning.

They are different forms of assessment, completed in different contexts and for different purposes. A result in an area such as reading or numeracy also reflects a number of individual skills working together.

If the results don’t seem to fit with what you, your child or their teachers are seeing, a Learning Assessment can help us look more closely at the specific skills underneath the broader results.

We bring this information together with your child’s school reports, NAPLAN results, learning history and other available information rather than relying on any one result in isolation.

Not necessarily. You can come to us for an assessment even if your child hasn’t had formal learning intervention yet.

When we are assessing for a Specific Learning Disorder, your child’s learning history is important. The DSM-5-TR criteria consider whether difficulties have persisted despite targeted support, so information about teaching, intervention and how your child has responded over time can help us determine whether the diagnostic criteria are met.

If your child hasn’t had targeted support yet, assessment can still be very useful. It can help us understand where your child is having difficulty and what type of learning support or intervention may be most helpful. In some cases, we may then recommend a period of targeted support and monitoring before making a diagnostic decision.

Your child does not need to wait for a diagnosis to receive support for their learning.

You can still talk with us about what you’re noticing.

School grades and reports are an important source of information, but they don’t always show how a child is getting to that result. A child may be receiving additional support, putting in significant effort, relying on other skills to compensate, or having difficulty with a particular underlying skill that is less obvious within their overall school performance.

A Learning Assessment allows us to look more closely at individual academic skills and bring this together with what you, your child and their school are seeing.

Not by itself.

Standardised academic assessment provides important information about your child’s current skills, but a diagnosis of Specific Learning Disorder is not made from one score.

Your psychologist considers the pattern and persistence of your child’s learning difficulties, their learning history, the support and intervention they have received, the impact of the difficulties and whether another factor better explains them.

Yes. A Cognitive Assessment can help us understand your child’s cognitive profile where there are questions about giftedness or advanced cognitive abilities.

Your psychologist will interpret your child’s overall cognitive ability together with their performance across the different areas assessed and explain what the results mean in the context of your child.

Where there are also learning concerns, we can explore whether additional Learning Assessment is useful.

A Cognitive Assessment is an important part of assessment for Intellectual Disability, but it isn’t sufficient on its own.

We also need to assess your child’s adaptive functioning — how they manage everyday conceptual, social and practical skills.

If Intellectual Disability is one of the questions being explored, we’ll plan the assessment to gather both cognitive and adaptive functioning information.

No. A low cognitive or IQ score on its own does not mean that a child has Intellectual Disability.

Assessment for Intellectual Disability considers both intellectual functioning and adaptive functioning. This means we also need to understand how your child manages everyday conceptual, social and practical skills and the support they need in daily life.

Your psychologist will interpret the cognitive results alongside an adaptive functioning assessment, such as the Vineland-3, as well as your child’s developmental history and other relevant information.

Sometimes a child may have low cognitive scores without meeting the criteria for Intellectual Disability. The assessment helps us understand what the results mean for your child as a whole, rather than making a diagnosis from an IQ score alone.

Assessment results may provide useful evidence about your child’s learning or cognitive profile and help inform school adjustments, learning supports or applications for exam accommodations.

The information required and criteria for particular accommodations can vary between schools, education systems and examining authorities. If the assessment is being requested for a particular application, please let us know at the beginning so we can understand what information is required.

Language and learning are closely connected.

If more detailed information about your child’s language or literacy skills would help us understand what is happening, a Playology Speech Pathologist can contribute to the assessment.

If the main concern is handwriting speed, legibility, pencil control, fatigue or fine motor skills, an Occupational Therapy Handwriting Assessment may be the better starting point.

If the concern is spelling, sentence construction or organising ideas in writing, a Learning Assessment may be more appropriate.

Sometimes both areas need to be explored.

Please send us the report. We don’t want to repeat assessment unnecessarily. Your psychologist can review what has already been completed, how recently it was completed and what questions remain.

We’ll then determine whether existing information can be used or whether updated or additional assessment would be useful.

If you have them, please send through relevant school reports, NAPLAN results, learning plans, intervention information, school assessment data and previous assessment reports.

Don’t worry if you don’t have everything. We’ll let you know what information is useful for your child’s assessment.

Where diagnosis is one of the questions being explored, your psychologist will consider whether your child meets the relevant diagnostic criteria.

If they do, we’ll explain the diagnosis and what it means for your child.

If they don’t, the assessment can still provide useful information about how your child learns, areas where they may need support and recommendations for home and school.

The assessment process varies because not every child needs the same components.

It may include a parent/carer appointment, one or more appointments with your child, school information, questionnaires or additional assessment, followed by scoring, interpretation, report writing and feedback.

At the beginning of the process, we’ll explain the assessment pathway recommended for your child, the associated fees and the expected timeframe.

Generally, not when a Learning or Cognitive Assessment is being completed on its own.

Medicare rebates may sometimes be available when cognitive or learning assessment forms part of a broader assessment for another eligible condition, depending on the referral and Medicare pathway being used.

A Mental Health Treatment Plan or GP Chronic Condition Management Plan cannot be used to claim diagnostic assessment appointments.

If your child is being assessed for another condition at the same time, or you already have a referral, please check with our Client Care team before booking. We can help you work out whether any part of the assessment may be eligible for a Medicare rebate.