My name is Laura Kaplan-Naim. I am based in New York City.
I am a New York State licensed Ph.D. Neuroeducational Psychologist with more than 25 years’ experience in the public and private sectors. I have a post-doctoral degree in Speech and Language Pathology.
I have experience working with a diverse population of students ranging from children and adults with mild reading or language-based difficulties to those with severe learning disorders.
My practice encompasses psychoeducational and academic evaluations of students through high school, college, and graduate school. I specialize in Certification and Recertification for Access and Accommodation for students with disabilities for the purposes of the ACT, SAT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT, GMAT, and Office of Accessibility Services for Colleges and Graduate Schools. Evaluations are comprised of the standard battery of cognitive, educational and social-projective tests.
I have expertise in evaluation of students who will be immigrating to the US and/or spending time abroad and require psychoeducational testing for placement or testing accommodations.
I offer the unique option of traveling to the students' home to conduct the evaluation. I recognize that students (particularly those in middle, high school, college, and graduate school) have very tight and often stressful schedules. My goal is to make the process as easy as possible for all!
I begin with a comprehensive consultation to learn more about the student and concerns. At this initial meeting the full scope of what a psychoeducational evaluation entails is explained. If parents and students wish to move forward with a full evaluation, an appointment is scheduled for testing.
What Is a Psychoeducational Evaluation?
Psychoeducational evaluation is a process by which a trained professional works with those involved in a child’s learning or development to identify the child’s strengths and weaknesses. Its goal is to enhance everyone’s ability to help the child be as successful as possible. People involved in the
What Is a Psychoeducational Evaluation?
Psychoeducational evaluation is a process by which a trained professional works with those involved in a child’s learning or development to identify the child’s strengths and weaknesses. Its goal is to enhance everyone’s ability to help the child be as successful as possible. People involved in the process include you, your child, your child’s teachers and, possibly, even your child’s pediatrician.
1. Background information and developmental history.
· To gain a comprehensive picture of your child, it will be important for the evaluator to have a full understanding of your child’s development leading up to the evaluation.
· Often evaluators will inquire about your child’s birth history, developmental history, medical history, academic history, social/emotional history and family history. Areas of concern—and when they first became areas of concern—will also be assessed as well as your impressions of your child’s strengths and weaknesses.
· Some parents believe that only a “clean slate” approach to testing will lead to an unbiased assessment of their child. Evaluators, however, don’t let this information guide their evaluation; rather, they utilize it to help in a diagnostic formulation and in planning an appropriate intervention for your child.
2. Assessment of abilities (cognitive functioning).
· When assessing a child’s abilities, the examiner administers a series of measures to determine how your child learns, as well as their ability to process information and formulate responses.
· These measures often include verbal and visual tests to examine verbal reasoning, nonverbal reasoning and certain types of memory, as well as the speed at which your child processes information and formulates responses.
· In addition to the scores that these measures generate, examiners also gain a great deal of information from how children approach and solve problems. Do they talk out loud when attempting to solve complex tasks? Do they work at their own pace, completing a task to the best of their ability?
· Are they impulsive in their responses (answering without weighing all possible options)? Do they have trouble with complex directions and instructions? Do they become anxious when they know they are being timed? Do they become overwhelmed when they perceive the task to be too great for them to accomplish?
· Note: These are just a few of the questions that will be answered to gain an assessment of the child’s abilities.
3. Assessment of processing.
· While cognitive assessment is a thorough process that helps determine the strengths and weaknesses a child possesses, there are other measures that also help in filling out your child’s learning profile.
· These include speech and language processing, auditory processing and other forms of memory, attention, organization and visual-motor processing.
4. Assessment of academic functioning.
· Achievement, or academic, assessment is carried out to assist in understanding your child’s academic strengths and weaknesses.
· Tasks involving reading, writing, spelling and mathematics are assessed for general academic skill; in many instances, academic fluency and efficiency are also measured.
· Evaluators often supplement general academic measures if they see that a child is having trouble in a specific area. For example, if a child has trouble reading single words, tests of phonological processing and reading efficiency may also be administered to determine the cause.
5. Social/emotional functioning.
· In the process of understanding strengths and weaknesses in a child, it is important to examine not only their cognitive and academic functioning, but also their social and emotional functioning.
· This may be done in a variety of ways, depending on the age of the child and the examiner’s approach.
· For younger children, social/emotional and behavioral functioning is often assessed through parent questionnaires.
· Teachers may also be asked to complete questionnaires regarding your child’s learning and behavior.
· As children get older, they may complete questionnaires assessing how they feel; and tests may be administered to measure how they cope with and view social relationships.
The goal of a psychoeducational evaluation is to enhance a child’s ability to be as successful as possible.
Struggles may occur early in a child’s development, manifested as difficulty understanding directions, learning to read or managing social interactions. For others, the challenge may arise as a child progresses in age, whether it i
The goal of a psychoeducational evaluation is to enhance a child’s ability to be as successful as possible.
Struggles may occur early in a child’s development, manifested as difficulty understanding directions, learning to read or managing social interactions. For others, the challenge may arise as a child progresses in age, whether it involves reading comprehension, completing tests in the allotted time, attending to tasks or organizing tasks and materials.
Struggles may persist, leaving parents, children and teachers feeling frustrated or helpless. Under those circumstances, a psychoeducational evaluation may open the door to greater understanding of the child by everyone involved and help point the way toward solutions.
For foreign students or those who are attending international schools, such evaluations will help identify academic intervention and accommodations that may be necessary for children entering or continuing in American and international schools around the world, as well as transitioning from one school to the other.
For American or foreign students who are beginning to make the transition to college, a psychoeducational evaluation can help identify accommodations that may be necessary in college. It can also help students prepare for higher education by identifying the ways in which they learn most efficiently.