Essentials of WPPSI-IV Assessment

Susan Engi Raiford, Diane L. Coalson

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781118380628
• eBook ISBN: 9781118869819
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Research & Methodology in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Essentials of WPPSI™-IV Assessment

Quickly acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to expertly administer, score, and interpret the WPPSI ™ -IV

Anyone who assesses young children is familiar with the challenges of obtaining accurate and adequate test data. In Essentials of WPPSI ™ -IV Assessment, the research directors who developed the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence ™ -Fourth Edition offer an insider's perspective on its conceptualization, development, administration, and scoring. The authors' flexible interpretive approach describes performance in both normative and intrapersonal contexts and enables interpretive case formulations from multiple theoretical and clinical perspectives.

Designed to help busy practitioners and school psychologists quickly acquire the expertise they need to make optimal use of the WPPSI ™ -IV, each concise chapter features end-of-chapter test questions and Rapid Reference, Caution, and Don't Forget boxes that are hallmark features of the Essentials series. The authors also include new "Behind the Scenes" boxes that provide unprecedented insight into the test development process.

The website provides helpful tools to enhance WPPSI ™ -IV administration and report writing, interpretive tables, and normative data for a number of index scores not available within the published test. The website also includes the WPPSI ™ -IV Interpretive Assistant 1.0, a scoring software that calculates norms for the additional index scores and walks the practitioner through the authors' interpretive approach.

Other titles in the Essentials of Psychological Assessment series:

Essentials of School Neuropsychological Assessment, Second Edition

Essentials of WIAT ® -III and KTEA-II Assessment

Essentials of Processing Assessment, Second Edition

Essentials of ADHD Assessment for Children and Adolescents

Essentials of Cross-Battery Assessment, Third Edition

Visit us on the Web at: www.wiley.com/psychology

One
Overview

The Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence–Fourth Edition (WPPSI-IV; Wechsler, 2012) continues the progressive trend of recent Wechsler intelligence scale revisions that mirror contemporary advances in intelligence theory, neuropsychology, cognitive neuroscience, and psychometric methodology. Major modifications have been made to both the content and structure to reflect these advances. Primary index scores provide reliable and valid estimates of ability in several distinct but related areas of cognitive functioning, including verbal comprehension, visual-spatial ability, fluid reasoning, working memory, and processing speed. A Full Scale IQ score also is available to represent the child's overall level of ability across these cognitive domains. A number of new, ancillary index scores (e.g., Vocabulary Acquisition Index, Nonverbal Index) are available to represent vocabulary acquisition, global intellectual ability, and cognitive proficiency in more specific clinical situations, such as referrals for suspected language delays, preliteracy concerns, school readiness, or evaluations of children who may have limited levels of English language fluency.

WPPSI-IV scores can be interpreted from both a normative and an intrapersonal perspective. They most often are used from a normative perspective; that is, to describe a child's cognitive ability by comparing the child's scores to those obtained by children of approximately the same age (i.e., comparison to a normative reference group). A child's intrapersonal pattern of cognitive strengths and weaknesses can be evaluated by comparing scores to an overall indicator of performance, or to one another. The score comparison approach has been reorganized and expanded for the WPPSI-IV, with increased comparison score options (e.g., the mean primary index score, the Full Scale IQ, the mean scaled score for the primary index subtests). When combined with the availability of numerous theoretically and practically based index scores (termed ancillary index scores in the published test), the WPPSI-IV interpretive approach allows a thorough evaluation of a child's pattern of cognitive strengths and weaknesses that can be tailored to the unique clinical situation each child presents.

Similar to authors of previous books within the Essentials series (e.g., Flanagan & Kaufman, 2009; Lichtenberger & Kaufman, 2004, 2013), our goal for this book is to provide a go-to reference for both novice and proficient practitioners using the WPPSI-IV. Administration, scoring, and interpretive information is clearly and succinctly covered in successive chapters, incorporating the familiar Rapid Reference, Caution, and Don't Forget boxes that are hallmark features of the Essentials series. We also include Behind the Scenes boxes that offer helpful insights into the test development process as we were the WPPSI-IV research directors. Test questions are included at the conclusion of each chapter to highlight critical content.

The CD included with this book contains appendix matter, such as administration aids, interpretive tables, and normative data for a number of additional index scores not available within the published test. These additional index scores were developed to meet i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Essentials of Psychological Assessment Series
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Series Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter One: Overview
• Chapter Two: WPPSI-IV Administration
• Chapter Three: WPPSI-IV Scoring
• Chapter Four: WPPSI-IV Score Analysis and Interpretation
• Chapter Five: Strengths and Weaknesses of the WPPSI-IV
• Chapter Six: WPPSI-IV Score Differences Across Demographic Groups
• Chapter Seven: WPPSI-IV Clinical Applications
• Chapter Eight: Illustrative Case Reports
• About the CD-ROM
• Index
• End User License Agreement