82 DECEMBER 2023 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT diagnostic formulation and planning appropriate intervention for your child. 2. Assessment of abilities (cognitive functioning). When assessing a child’s abilities, the examiner administers a series of measures to determine how your child learns, as well as their ability to process information and formulate responses. These measures often include both verbal and visual tests to examine verbal reasoning, nonverbal reasoning, certain types of memory, and the speed at which your child processes information and formulates responses. In addition to the scores that these measures provide, examiners also gain a great deal of information from how your child approaches and solves problems. Do they work “at their own pace,” completing a task to the best of their ability? Are they impulsive in their responses (answering without weighing all possible options)? Do they experience difficulty with complex directions and instructions? Do they become anxious when they know they are being timed? Do they become overwhelmed when they perceive the task to be too great for them to accomplish? These are just a few of the questions that assessment of abilities will help to answer. 3. Assessment of processing. While cognitive assessment is often a thorough process and helps determine strengths and weaknesses that your child possesses, there are other measures that also help provide answers to your child’s learning profile. These other measures include speech and language processing, auditory processing, other types of memory not measured in the cognitive evaluation, and visual-motor processing. Prior to the evaluation, begin recording any concerns or thoughts that you have to share with the evaluator.
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