Pediatric Neuropsychological Assessment Services
Pediatric Neuropsychological Assessment Services
Clinical neuropsychology is focused on understanding the link between the brain and behavior. For example, how changes in the health of the brain might affect someone’s ability to pay attention, remember or solve problems. The understanding between how someone thinks and acts and how the brain works is used to diagnose and treat brain disorders.
Pediatric neuropsychologists are licensed psychologists who evaluate and help children with brain disorders, such as brain injury, medical disease or developmental problems. A neuropsychological evaluation could help parents, teachers and physicians to understand how problems with the brain may related to problems in daily life, how a child learns best, or why a child may be having behavior problems, and help match expectations to a child’s specific strengths and weaknesses, help monitor development or disease progression over time, and help develop treatment and school plans.
This service cares for children, adolescents and young adults (ages 12 months to 21 years) with a known or suspected medical, neurological or other neurocognitive deficit. A referral is required.
Psychological services for assessing for autism and other developmental concerns in children are offered at the Providence Children’s Development Institute.
Neuropsychological assessment services for adults are offered separately.
We commonly see patients with these conditions:
There are some types of evaluations that we do not typically provide, such as those that are exclusively for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in an otherwise healthy child; learning disabilities; or autism spectrum disorder. We also do not provide exclusively psychological/psychiatric assessments to diagnose mood and behavioral disorders, or evaluations for forensic or legal purposes.
A comprehensive neuropsychological evaluation typically involves a clinical interview with caregivers and the patient, as well as administration of standardized tests that measure a wide range of abilities and symptoms. The testing is usually completed during a 4-6 hour appointment, after which the family can schedule a follow-up appointment to review the test results and recommendations.