Gifted or Cognitive Assessment
Our assessments investigating giftedness in children provide a deeper understanding of children’s cognitive processes within five domains of functioning.
Parents and/or teachers may often wonder about giftedness due to the child’s environment of learning, advanced vocabulary and/or background knowledge, creativity, abstract thinking, and ability to quickly catch onto new concepts.
Gifted students often require an enriched curriculum, such as those offered by Westmount Charter School or the GATE program through the Calgary Board of Education. Gifted psychological assessments can help determine eligibility for such programs.
At our office, we administer either the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children – Fifth Edition (WISC – V), Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence – Fourth Edition (WPPSI – IV), or Wechsler Adult Intelligence Test-Fourth Edition (WAIS-IV) depending on the age of your child.
The general outline of our Gifted Assessment in Calgary is as follows:
30-minute Initial Consultation
PARENTS ONLY
(IN PERSON or VIRTUAL)
This initial consultation allows for the parents to meet with the psychologist to provide their perspective on their child’s strengths and talents.
2-hours of Standardized Testing
CHILD ONLY
(IN PERSON)
Testing includes a complete intellectual testing battery that is conducted in one 2-hour assessment session. For younger children (aged 5 and under), we find it beneficial to divide this time into two 1-hour assessment sessions so that they do not become too fatigued, as we do not want to jeopardize validity or reliability of the assessment results.
30-minute Parent Feedback Meeting
PARENTS ONLY
(IN PERSON or VIRTUAL)
The feedback meeting provides an opportunity for the child psychologist to summarize assessment results and provide a detailed summary around how their child thinks and processes information. Strategies will be provided and a discussion on school placement may be warranted.
2-hours of Report Writing
This report includes a thorough summary of assessment results and is often required for school or gifted programming placement.
Frequently Asked Questions
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A gifted assessment provides information about a child’s cognitive or intellectual abilities. Understanding one’s cognitive abilities is more than simply finding out a full-scale IQ score, but rather, gaining insight into the five factors that contribute to overall intellectual functioning and the interplay between them. Variability within Index scores can often predict challenges and inform recommendations and accommodations for learning.
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A gifted and talented learner is identified when their overall intellectual abilities are identified at ≥ 98th percentile or a standard score of 130+ on a standardized cognitive assessment battery.
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Understanding a child’s cognitive ability is an important factor in helping them achieve their potential. Gifted learners require enrichment to promote engagement with learning. Often, a gifted assessment is required to be considered for admission to a school that caters to the unique learning needs of children and teenagers who are gifted.
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Westmount Charter School is a specialized k-12 school within Calgary, Alberta, that is dedicated to the learning of children who are identified as gifted. The requirement for an application is to have an assessment into intellectual functioning by a psychologist. The process differs depending on the age and needs of your child. Typically it includes the following:
Initial Parent Intake (30 minutes)
Assessment Session (2 hours of testing)
Parent Feedback Meeting (30 minutes)
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The Gifted and Talented Education Program (GATE) offered through the Calgary Board of Education (CBE) is another option for gifted learners. For applications to the GATE program, additional academic achievement testing is required in addition to a gifted or cognitive assessment. The process is as follows:
Initial Parent Intake (1 hour)
Assessment Session 1 of 2 (2 hours)-Cognitive Assessment
Assessment Session 2 of 2 (2 hours)- Academic Achievement
Parent Feedback Meeting (1 hour)