Surveys reveal that many school psychologists continue to employ cognitive profile analysis despite the long-standing history of negative research results from this class of practice. This begets the question: why do questionable assessment practices persist in school psychology? To provide insight on this dilemma, this article presents the…

This article provides guidelines for an entry-level course that prepares psychology students and practitioners to acquire entry-level skills, abilities, knowledge, and attitudes important to the individual assessment of intellectual abilities of children and youth. The article reviews prominent international, regional, and national policies,…

Despite much research examining whether bilingual individuals demonstrate superior executive function (EF) skills compared to monolinguals, the purported bilingual advantage remains controversial. One potential reason for discrepant findings across studies examining the bilingual advantage is the difficulty in matching monolingual and bilingual…

The Woodcock-Johnson (fourth edition; WJ IV; Schrank, McGrew, & Mather, 2014a) was recently redeveloped and retains its linkage to Cattell-Horn-Carroll theory (CHC). Independent reviews (e.g., Canivez, 2017) and investigations (Dombrowski, McGill, & Canivez, 2017) of the structure of the WJ IV full test battery and WJ IV Cognitive have…

Purpose: Children and early adolescents seem to have an advantage over adults in acquiring nonnative speech sounds, supported by evidence showing that earlier age of acquisition strongly predicts second language attainment. Although many factors influence children's ultimate success in language learning, it is unknown whether children rely on…

The history of intellectual assessment with children and youth in Peru is presented from the foundation of scientific psychology in Peru until now. Current practices are affected by the multicultural ethnolinguistic diversity of the country, the quality of the different training programs, as well as by Peruvian regulations for becoming an academic…

The Woodcock-Johnson-Fourth edition (WJ IV; Schrank, McGrew, & Mather, 2014a) and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fifth edition (WISC-V; Wechsler, 2014) are two of the major tests of cognitive abilities used in school psychology. The complete WJ IV battery includes the Woodcock-Johnson IV Tests of Cognitive Abilities (Schrank,…

Previous literature has suggested the existence of a close relationship between individuals' intellectual abilities and their cognitive profile, understood as their performance in tasks tapping into the different cognitive domains. This relationship has typically been discussed in populations characterized as having high intellectual abilities, as…

The diagnostic utility of the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Cognitive Abilities and Clinical Clusters was assessed in a sample of 52 children (26 Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disordered (ADHD) and 26 matched controls). Multivariate analysis of variance followed by post-hoc testing and d-ratios yielded some statistically significant and…

We examined children's sleep at age 9 as a predictor of developmental trajectories of cognitive performance from ages 9 to 11 years. The effects of sleep on cognition are not uniform and thus we tested race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES), and sex as moderators of these associations. At the first assessment, 282 children aged 9.44 years (52%…

We investigated 7- to 10-year-old children's productive extension of semantic memory through self-generation of new factual knowledge derived through integration of separate yet related facts learned through instruction or through reading. In Experiment 1, an experimenter read the to-be-integrated facts. Children successfully learned and…

This study explored pronoun production and general syntactic abilities in story retelling and story generation among children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Twenty-four children diagnosed with ASD, ages 6;1-14;3 and 17 typically-developing (TD) children ages 5;11-14;4 participated in the study. The linguistic measures for general syntax…

The increasing diversity of the U.S. population has resulted in increased concerns about the psychological assessment of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. To date, little empirical research supports recommendations in test selection and interpretation, such as those presented in the Culture-Language Interpretative…

Three studies examined the short-term impact of television (TV) on children's executive function (EF). Study 1 (N = 160) showed that 4- and 6-year-olds' EF is impaired after watching 2 different fast and fantastical shows, relative to that of children who watched a slow, realistic show or played. In Study 2 (N = 60), 4-year-olds' EF was as…

Traditional IQ technology, crystallized by the seminal work of Binet and Wechsler as well as others, has played a critical and profound role in psychology, making intelligence testing among the most important contributions psychology has made to society (Anastasi & Urbina, 1997). But this technology has limits; it has not had the advantage of…