Psychometric Assessments

Why seek an assessment?

Psychometric assessments can provide important information about a child or young person's strengths and weaknesses. They may provide identification through a diagnosis if one applies. Assessments can also inform appropriate strategies to support the child and facilitate appropriate educational or additional supports (such as NDIS). Some reasons people may seek assessment include:

Learning differences or delays
Underachievement in particular areas
Giftedness
Emotional or behavioural difficulties in the classroom or at home
Difficulties making or maintaining friendships
Difficulties adapting to changes in routine
Trouble concentrating or easily distracted

What's involved?

At Building Blocks Psychology, we provide comprehensive assessments depending on the needs of the individual. Common parts of an assessment include:

A comprehensive interview with parents/caregivers
An individual assessment with the young person
Questionnaires completed by parents and teachers
Additional feedback from teachers
Review of relevant reports (such as paediatrician, therapist, school reports)
Feedback on the results on the assessment
Comprehensive report with practical and strengths focussed recommendations

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Assessment Types

Autism Assessments

An autism assessment can help identify differences in the social communication styles, interests, sensory needs and other patterns of behaviours of the individual. It explores whether these differences might be explained by an autistic neurotype. Identification can help deepen both self-understanding and help others (like parents, teachers, friends) to understand the person more. These assessments can be used for NDIS applications if a diagnosis is applicable.

Every autistic person is unique, but some characteristics that might indicate an autistic neurotype include:

Preferring a specific, predictable routine and having differences in the way they transition between activities like finding it hard to stop until something is "finished"
Processing information very literally
Deeply passionate interests that can become all-encompassing
Differences in processing of sensory information, including being sensitive to sensory experiences (like being sensitive to certain sounds, having strong aversions to certain clothing textures, or having differences with eating due to textures or tastes of food), as well as seeking out sensory experiences (like seeking movement with spinning, smelling objects, rubbing soft textures)
Repetitive, "stimming" behaviours like flapping their hands, jumping, spinning, and rocking back and forth. These may also be more subtle like skin picking, or hair twirling.
Repetitive speech, like echoing someone (known as echolalia) or repeating sounds, words, phrases
Having differences in non-verbal communication such as unusual eye contact or no eye contact at all, and differences in their tone of voice, use of gestures, and/or facial expressions
Finding "small talk" conversations hard, like requiring lots of prompts from parents to talk about how their day was
Enjoying "info-dumping", where conversations can seem more one-sided when sharing information on their interests
Having differences in their friendships, like finding it hard to make new friends, wanting to play by specific rules/structure, or needing some time alone to recharge after socialising

Our assessments are comprehensive and use evidence-based assessment tools. We are mindful of masked and internalised presentations, particularly in girls/women, trans and non-binary folk.

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Learning Assessments

A learning assessment includes a cognitive assessment and may include an academic assessment depending on the areas of concern. Learning assessments can help understand cognitive strengths and weaknesses, and may provide diagnoses or identification of:

Intellectual Disability
Specific learning differences/disorder (also known as dyslexia [reading], dyscalculia [mathematics], and dysgraphia [writing])
Giftedness

These types of assessments can help provide an understanding of your child's learning profile and allow targeted recommendations specific to their areas of challenges. They can provide access to specific supports at school such as accelerated programs for giftedness, as well as targeted provisions for learning challenges. These assessments can provide supportive evidence for NESA-determined provisions for the HSC.

To make a diagnosis of a specific learning disorder, there needs to be a period of at least 6 months of intervention. If this is something you are exploring, it's best to check with your child's teacher about the learning interventions they have received before enquiring.

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ADHD Assessments

An ADHD assessment can help understand more about why an individual may have more difficulties than others with areas such as concentrating, following instructions, acting without thinking or constantly fidgeting and feeling restless. Psychologists can provide a diagnosis of ADHD, but cannot provide medications. If your main goal of the assessment is to considering medication, it may be best to see a paediatrician or psychiatrist for assessment.

An ADHD assessment looks to understand if someone's challenges are explained by an ADHD neurotype, as well as providing insight into their ADHD profile. ADHD stands for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and has three diagnostic presentations:

ADHD: predominantly hyperactive/impulsive presentation - this might be what some people typically think of when they think of ADHD. This is characterised by traits like fidgeting and squirming in their seat, running around and climbing at times when they shouldn't, never sitting still for long, and lots of energy. It might also look like trouble playing quietly, getting comments from teachers about talking too much in class, blurting out answers and interrupting others in conversations. It can look like difficulty waiting their turn, being impatient, and impulsively doing things without thinking it through.
ADHD: predominantly inattentive presentation - this is what some people would know as ADD (though we don't use that term anymore). This presentation is characterised by traits like having difficulty keeping attention on one thing for long, getting bored with things quickly, and getting easily distracted. People with this presentation might have difficulties with making careless mistakes, getting started on boring or difficult tasks and not following through on instructions (especially if there is more than one step!). They might seem to zone out or appear daydreamy. They can also have trouble with organisation, like having a really messy room, poor sense of time management, losing things they need for activities, and forgetting things often.
ADHD: combined presentation - this is where someone meets the full diagnostic criteria for both the hyperactive/impulsive and inattentive presentations.

As young people who are seeking this kind of assessment often have difficulties at school, we often recommend a comprehensive learning assessment to be included in our ADHD assessments to ensure that the challenges aren't better explained by learning difficulties.

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Prior to School Assessments

A child's paediatrician or their prospective school may request a cognitive (or IQ) assessment prior to them starting school. This can help understand more about the child's strengths and weaknesses, and their learning potential. For children with neurodevelopmental differences (such as autism or Global Developmental Delay) who may need additional supports in their transition to school, this assessment can help to determine the best supports for them.

This type of assessment would fulfil the registration requirements of "current psychometric assessment" for an ASPECT school.

We use the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI-IV) for prior to school cognitive assessments.

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Autism/ADHD/Learning Assessments

This type of assessment is for when there are questions around multiple neurodivergence - where the things outlined under the assessments for autism, ADHD, and learning are all ringing true for your child. This can be because there is an element of overlap between some of the brain types, but there is also a high rate of co-occurrence of these neurotypes.

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