Cognitive Development
Assessing cognitive functioning in children and adolescents
Evaluating a child’s cognitive functioning is an important piece of work with great responsibility. However, it is not always an easy task. We recognize that as professionals working with children and adolescents across the scope of cognitive functioning you may experience many challenges. These include encountering symptoms of different conditions overlapping, making it difficult to differentiate between diagnoses; experiencing a lack of appropriate measures or suitable norms, such as when assessing a child with another mother-tongue or cultural background; the influence of environmental factors such as the family situation, substance use, or screen habits. These areas encapsulate the trials and challenges that greatly impact not only a child’s cognitive functioning, but also the accuracy with which you are able to assess your clients.
On this page we have gathered information about cognitive functions and how you assess them in children, to support you in your clinical work. Here you’ll find suggestions about articles, cognitive assessments, as well as advice from our assessment consultants.
Common challenges in cognitive assessments of children
Assessing cognitive functions in children is a complex process. Different conditions may display similar symptoms, the child may have another mother-tongue than English, and environmental factors may complicate the interpretation of test results. In this paper you can read about common challenges that psychologists face in cognitive assessments and suggestions about recent publications that may support your clinical work.
Your guide to assessing cognitive functions in children
As part of the evaluation process, it is sometimes necessary to analyse performance in different cognitive domains to help determine the diagnosis or establish the severity level. In this guide you will find suggestions about assessments for evaluating executive function, processing speed and visuospatial ability – three areas that have been found to be particularly important in cognitive development of children.
Cognitive domains important for child development and how you assess them
In this overview you will find suggestions of assessments for evaluating attention, executive functions and memory ability in children and adolescents. These areas represent three of the six key domains of cognitive function defined in DSM-5 (Ganguli et al., 2011) and have been found to be central for cognitive development in children (Zelazo et al., 2021).
Read more about…
Deficits in different cognitive areas may be an early marker of a neurodevelopment disorders – such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and intellectual disability.
Autism
Discover information, resources and assessments of relevance for the assessment of autism.
ADHD
Discover information, resources and assessments of relevance for the assessment of ADHD. and visuospatial ability – three areas that have been found to be particularly important in cognitive development of children.
Digital Solutions
Are you looking for a solution that gives you automatic reminders of rules, reduces the risk of errors and enables you to spend less time on administration? Learn more about our digital tools for assessing children and adolescents.