Neuropsychological Assessment

A pediatric neuropsychological evaluation is an objective, comprehensive assessment of cognitive, academic, and behavioral functioning that can aide in identifying secondary diagnoses, explaining and predicting behavior, developing a profile of the child’s strengths and weaknesses; this can be used in intervention, to assess school capacity and help to measure learning and behavioral difficulties resulting from neurological bases.  A neuropsychological evaluation for children with ASD is more appropriate for those children who are considered high functioning or who have Asperger’s Disorder.  A neuropsychological evaluation is tailored to the child’s presenting concerns and can include an evaluation of cognitive skills, adaptive functioning, language abilities, and academic skills.  In addition, the assessment includes one or more traditional neuropsychological measures that assess attention, executive function, memory and learning, motor skills, and finally, emotional functioning. This type of assessment helps to identify or rule out executive dysfunction, memory problems, visual processing disorders, auditory processing disorders, ADHD, learning disabilities and comorbid psychiatric disorders.