Learning Disabilities Testing

Some students learn easily regardless of the teaching strategies or academic curricula selected. For many students, however, learning is an ongoing challenge despite high intelligence and motivation.

When a student has persistent school difficulties, it is important to consider the possibility of a specific learning disability that may require psychological testing.

Dr. Pratt only evaluates learning disabilities as part of comprehensive psychological testing.

For information about psychological testing, please click here.

Psychological testing for specific learning disabilities may be needed if the student shows:

Cognitive

Poor fund of general information, difficulty sequencing ideas, little awareness of cause and effect relationships, poor ability to organize ideas and information, and inconsistent recall of learned information



Reading

Poor phonetic decoding skills, slow and labored reading, difficulty understanding what was read, poor ability to focus on main ideas and trouble with comprehension due to word by word decoding



Perceptual-Motor

Reversals, rotations and inversions of letters and numbers, imprecise fine motor coordination, such as unstable pencil grip, papers are generally sloppy, poorly formed or illegible letters, slow rate of writing and poor quality on timed tasks



Spelling

Trouble developing letter-sound associations, transposition of letters when spelling words, omission or substitution of sounds when spelling words, confuses words such as "to", "two" and "too", and has to think about spelling of common words



Mathematics

Trouble distinguishing letters from numbers, confusing arithmetic signs, slow computational skills, labored mathematical reasoning and difficulty recalling the sequence of an operational process



Written Language

Slow and labored writing, imprecise and unclear expression, poor organization of thoughts, incorrect use of punctuation and composition usually too short for the purpose



Spoken Language

Trouble pronouncing individual words, confuses words that sound similar, difficulty grasping what others say to them, limited range of vocabulary and difficulty retrieving the appropriate words for a situation



Work and Study Habits

Poor organization and budgeting of time, difficulty completing work on time, and difficulty sustaining effort on a task



Emotional

Nightly frustration with homework, excessive test anxiety, low academic self-confidence and embarrassment when peers see work