A Cognitive assessment involves assessing an individuals IQ and adaptive behaviour, and can help identify strengths and weaknesses that person may have in their daily life and what strategies or supports may help them. The IQ assessment looks at the way people may take in new information or how they learn, how they process that information as well as their memory function. The Adaptive Behaviour Assessment explores how that person functions in their day to day life, what they are capable of doing and what they find challenging.

A cognitive assessment can help to inform a diagnosis of intellectual disability if needed, in conjunction with a Psychiatrist or Paediatrician.

What is Involved?

A comprehensive cognitive assessment, one that would be used to help diagnose an intellectual disability, involves a number of steps, including:

• Review of any past medical, therapy or school reports, if available.
• Feedback from your child’s teacher (for child and adolescent clients.)
• Client and parent/caregiver interview to gather the history relevant to the diagnosis. Where parent/caregivers are unavailable, other close persons in the clients life are suitable to attend.
• Completion of an IQ assessment.
• Completion of an Adaptive Behaviour Assessment
• A feedback session to discuss results and recommendations.

How Long Does the Assessment Take?

Prior to the assessment, you will be sent out an Intake and consent form, along with a form designed to gather a comprehensive background history. Please allow at least 1 hour to complete these forms.

The assessment itself is split into 2 parts – a clinical interview and completion of the IQ assessments itself. The clinical interview involves a discussion around the reason for referral, discussing aspects of the background history (based on the answers provided in the intake forms) and running through the Adaptive Behaviour Assessment questionnaire. Where the assessment is for a child, this part of the assessment is usually completed with just the parents as it can take up to 3hrs to run through all the questions – quite a long time for young ones!

The second part of the assessment, the IQ assessment, is done directly with the client, and can take between 1 – 2 hours to complete. For young clients, parents are not normally allowed in the room as it can impact the results of the assessment, however this is flexible and dependent on how the child presents on the day. While we normally book both parts of the assessment on 2 separate days due to the time needed, it can be completed in one day if requested.

After the assessment, a comprehensive report is completed and discussed with you during a 30-45min feedback session.

Why Would I Need An Assessment?

The primary reason someone would seek out a Cognitive Assessment would be to assess for an Intellectual Disability. However, cognitive assessments may also be sought out for:

• Assessing for cognitive decline, such as due to neurodegenerative disability (i.e. Dementia)
• Assessing a change of cognitive ability, such as post injury (i.e. brain injury).
• To re-assess cognitive ability, particularly where time has passed from the original assessment (i.e. re-assessing during adolescence where the first assessment was completed in early childhood).

Aside from these reasons, a full Cognitive Assessment can help provide recommendations and strategies to help utilise the individuals strengths identified from the assessment, and to support any challenges that may be present, to improve quality of life.

How much does the Assessment Cost?

A comprehensive cognitive assessment takes a Psychologist approximately 8hrs to complete, which includes the time needed to conduct any interviews, complete the IQ and Adaptive behaviour assessments, review past reports/information, score the assessments and write the report. Currently, this means a Comprehensive Cognitive assessment with Anastasi Psychology will cost $1760.