About the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests - Eligibility Determination
We use the WJ III Tests of Achievement to help assess students for learning disabilities and to
determine if they are eligible for special services. The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act
(IDEA) is federal legislation that defines the terms under which students may be declared eligible for
special services. IDEA defines learning disability as a severe discrepancy between intellectual ability and
achievement in one or more areas (see chart below). The WJ III Tests of Achievement includes clusters
that directly parallel these IDEA areas and provide sound procedures for determining discrepancies
between a student's abilities and achievement in each area.
We have over 50 separate clinical tests in our office libraries to choose from when we do an assessment.
We use a variety of tests to measure different problems. This page describes only a very small subset of
the large number of clinical tests we can use to analyze and understand a person's potential, academic
performance level, attention and concentration levels and learning style.
We write an extensive report, 18+ pages, detailing all of the individual areas where your child requires
additional help. We also identify their learning style and learning strengths and explain and provide
evidence for why your child has a particular learning style. Of course, we also provide several pages of
specific recommendations for their problems and have staff who can come to your house and provide
educational therapy or tutoring as needed.
We provide both the technical scores, age and grade equivalents, as well as a simple summary of the
results and a graphic band example of how your child would perform with curriculum at different grade
levels, allowing you to tailor his needs to his mastery / difficulty level. The complete administration of both
the cognitive and achivement assessments, including the extended tests, is approximately five hours.
Scoring and writing the report involves four hours. We will meet with you in person for another hour to
explain the report and explain his or her learning style and answer your questions related to their learning
ability. It takes about 10 days to write the report beginning from the last day a student is tested.
We also provide you with an extensive checklist about your child's family history and developmental
history in a multiple choice format, so that you can complete it quickly and provide us with important
information to be considered in the analysis and background history of the report.
We provide an extensive checklist in multiple choice format for your child's teacher so that we can have
input from the person who is most familiar with him in his school environment.
For adolescents and adults, we provide a self-assessment checklist in multiple choice format that is
included in the report and includes details about their motivation and satisfaction with school.
In the end, our report will provide 4 levels of interpretive information:
Descriptions of WJ III Tests Administered for Comprehensive
Psycho-Educational Assessment
Verbal Comprehension measured aspects of The student's language development in spoken English language,
such as knowledge of vocabulary or the ability to reason using lexical (word) knowledge.
Visual-Auditory Learning required The student to learn, store, and retrieve a series of visual-auditory
associations. On this test of associative and meaningful memory, The student was asked to learn and recall rebuses
(pictographic representations of words).
Spatial Relations required The student to identify the two or three pieces that form a complete target shape, a
visualization-of-spatial-relationships task.
Sound Blending measured The student's skill in synthesizing language sounds (phonemes). The stutdent was
asked to listen to a series of syllables or phonemes and then to blend the sounds into a word.
Concept Formation measured The student's categorical reasoning ability. This test also measured The student's
flexibility in thinking. The student was presented with a complete stimulus set from which to derive the rule for each
item. Immediate feedback was provided
regarding the correctness of each response before a new item was presented.
Visual Matching measured an aspect of cognitive efficiency-- the speed at which The student can make visual
symbol discriminations. The student was asked to locate and circle the two identical numbers in a row of six
numbers. This task proceeded in difficulty from
single-digit numbers to triple-digit numbers and had a 3-minute time limit.
Numbers Reversed required The student to hold a span of numbers in immediate awareness (memory) while
performing a mental operation on it (reversing the sequence).
Incomplete Words measured auditory analysis and auditory closure, aspects of phonemic awareness and phonetic
coding. After hearing, from an audio recording, a word that has one or more phonemes missing, The student was
asked to identify the complete word.
Auditory Working Memory measured The student's short-term auditory memory span. She was asked to listen to
a series that contains digits and words, such as "dog, 1, shoe, 8, 2, apple." She was then asked to reorder the
information, repeating first the objects in sequential order and then the digits in sequential order. This task required
The student to hold information in immediate awareness, divide the information into two groups, and shift attentional
resources to the two new ordered sequences.
General Information provided an index of The student's general verbal knowledge. This test has two subtests. In
the first subtest, The student was asked, "Where would you find... (an object)?" In the second subtest, she was
asked, "What would you do with... (an object)?" The initial items involved objects that appear commonly in the
environment. The items became increasingly difficult as the selected objects become more unusual.
Retrieval Fluency measured The student's fluency of retrieval from stored knowledge. She was asked to name as
many examples as possible from a given category within a 1-minute time period. The task consisted of three
different categories: things to eat or drink, first names of people, and animals.
Picture Recognition measured visual memory of objects or pictures. The student's task was to recognize a subset
of previously presented pictures within a field of distracting pictures.
Auditory Attention measured an aspect of speech-sound discrimination-- the ability to overcome the effects of
auditory distortion or masking in understanding oral language. This is an auditory processing ability requiring
selective attention. The student's task was to listen to a word, while seeing four pictures, and then point to the
correct picture for the word. As the test progressed, the task increased in difficulty in two ways: the sound
discriminations became increasingly difficult and added background noise increased in intensity.
Analysis-Synthesis measured The student's ability to reason and draw conclusions from given conditions (or
deductive reasoning). She was given instructions on how to perform an increasingly complex procedure; she was
also given immediate feedback regarding the correctness of each response before a new item was presented.
Decision Speed measured The student's ability to make correct conceptual decisions quickly. In each row, her
task was to locate quickly the two pictures that are most similar conceptually. This test had a 3-minute time limit.
Memory for Words measured The student's short-term auditory memory span. In this test, she was asked to repeat
lists of unrelated words in the correct sequence.
Rapid Picture Naming required naming facility, a form of cognitive fluency. This test measured The student's
speed of direct recall of information from her acquired knowledge. This test had a 2-minute time limit.
Planning provided information about the processes The student used to determine, select, or apply solutions to
problems, such as forethought. On this test, The student was asked to trace a pattern without removing the pencil
from the paper or retracing any lines.
Pair Cancellation provided information about The student's ability to control interferences, sustain her attention,
and stay on task in a vigilant manner. In a 3-minute time period, she was asked to locate and mark a repeated
pattern as quickly as possible.
Letter-Word Identification measured The student's ability to identify letters and words. She was not required to
know the meaning of any word.
Reading Fluency measured The student's ability to quickly read simple sentences, decide if the statement is true,
and then circle Yes or No. She was asked to complete as many items as possible within a 3-minute time limit.
Story Recall measured aspects of The student's oral language ability including language development and
meaningful memory. The task required her to recall increasingly complex stories that were presented using an audio
recording. After listening to a passage, The student was asked to recall as many details of the story as she could
remember.
Understanding Directions required The student to listen to a sequence of audio-recorded instructions and then
follow the directions by pointing to various objects in a picture.
Calculation measured The student's ability to perform mathematical computations.
Math Fluency measured The student's ability to solve simple addition, subtraction, and multiplication facts quickly.
She was presented with a series of simple arithmetic problems to complete in a 3-minute time limit.
Spelling measured The student's ability to print letters and spell words correctly.
Writing Fluency measured The student's skill in formulating and writing simple sentences quickly. She was
required to write sentences relating to a given stimulus picture that includes a set of three words.
This test had a 7-minute time limit.
Passage Comprehension measured The student's ability to understand what she read. Some items involved use
of pictures. The items became increasingly difficult and required The student to read a short passage and identify a
missing key word that made sense in the context of the passage.
Applied Problems measured The student's ability to analyze and solve math problems. To solve the problems, she
was required to listen to the problem, recognize the procedure to be followed, and then perform relatively simple
calculations. Because many of the problems
included extraneous information, The student needed to decide not only the appropriate mathematical operations to
use but also what information to include in the calculation.
Writing Samples measured The student's skill in writing responses to a variety of demands. She was asked to
produce written sentences that were evaluated with respect to the quality of expression. The student was not
penalized for any errors in basic writing skills, such
as spelling or punctuation.
Story Recall--Delayed measured aspects of The student's language development and meaningful memory using
previously presented stories. The task required her to recall the story elements that were previously presented in
Story Recall.
We use the WJ III Tests of Achievement to help assess students for learning disabilities and to
determine if they are eligible for special services. The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act
(IDEA) is federal legislation that defines the terms under which students may be declared eligible for
special services. IDEA defines learning disability as a severe discrepancy between intellectual ability and
achievement in one or more areas (see chart below). The WJ III Tests of Achievement includes clusters
that directly parallel these IDEA areas and provide sound procedures for determining discrepancies
between a student's abilities and achievement in each area.
We have over 50 separate clinical tests in our office libraries to choose from when we do an assessment.
We use a variety of tests to measure different problems. This page describes only a very small subset of
the large number of clinical tests we can use to analyze and understand a person's potential, academic
performance level, attention and concentration levels and learning style.
We write an extensive report, 18+ pages, detailing all of the individual areas where your child requires
additional help. We also identify their learning style and learning strengths and explain and provide
evidence for why your child has a particular learning style. Of course, we also provide several pages of
specific recommendations for their problems and have staff who can come to your house and provide
educational therapy or tutoring as needed.
We provide both the technical scores, age and grade equivalents, as well as a simple summary of the
results and a graphic band example of how your child would perform with curriculum at different grade
levels, allowing you to tailor his needs to his mastery / difficulty level. The complete administration of both
the cognitive and achivement assessments, including the extended tests, is approximately five hours.
Scoring and writing the report involves four hours. We will meet with you in person for another hour to
explain the report and explain his or her learning style and answer your questions related to their learning
ability. It takes about 10 days to write the report beginning from the last day a student is tested.
We also provide you with an extensive checklist about your child's family history and developmental
history in a multiple choice format, so that you can complete it quickly and provide us with important
information to be considered in the analysis and background history of the report.
We provide an extensive checklist in multiple choice format for your child's teacher so that we can have
input from the person who is most familiar with him in his school environment.
For adolescents and adults, we provide a self-assessment checklist in multiple choice format that is
included in the report and includes details about their motivation and satisfaction with school.
In the end, our report will provide 4 levels of interpretive information:
- 1) Qualitative - Observations, Background Information, Response Analysis
2) Level of Development - Norm referenced age equivalents and grade equivalents
3) Proficiency - Your child's distance from their current grade placement
4) Relative Standing in a Group - Relative position to other students at their age or grade equivalent
as a percentage rank.
Recommendations: A variety of ways to address problems: Geared toward teacher, parent, student
and education professionals.
Descriptions of WJ III Tests Administered for Comprehensive
Psycho-Educational Assessment
Verbal Comprehension measured aspects of The student's language development in spoken English language,
such as knowledge of vocabulary or the ability to reason using lexical (word) knowledge.
Visual-Auditory Learning required The student to learn, store, and retrieve a series of visual-auditory
associations. On this test of associative and meaningful memory, The student was asked to learn and recall rebuses
(pictographic representations of words).
Spatial Relations required The student to identify the two or three pieces that form a complete target shape, a
visualization-of-spatial-relationships task.
Sound Blending measured The student's skill in synthesizing language sounds (phonemes). The stutdent was
asked to listen to a series of syllables or phonemes and then to blend the sounds into a word.
Concept Formation measured The student's categorical reasoning ability. This test also measured The student's
flexibility in thinking. The student was presented with a complete stimulus set from which to derive the rule for each
item. Immediate feedback was provided
regarding the correctness of each response before a new item was presented.
Visual Matching measured an aspect of cognitive efficiency-- the speed at which The student can make visual
symbol discriminations. The student was asked to locate and circle the two identical numbers in a row of six
numbers. This task proceeded in difficulty from
single-digit numbers to triple-digit numbers and had a 3-minute time limit.
Numbers Reversed required The student to hold a span of numbers in immediate awareness (memory) while
performing a mental operation on it (reversing the sequence).
Incomplete Words measured auditory analysis and auditory closure, aspects of phonemic awareness and phonetic
coding. After hearing, from an audio recording, a word that has one or more phonemes missing, The student was
asked to identify the complete word.
Auditory Working Memory measured The student's short-term auditory memory span. She was asked to listen to
a series that contains digits and words, such as "dog, 1, shoe, 8, 2, apple." She was then asked to reorder the
information, repeating first the objects in sequential order and then the digits in sequential order. This task required
The student to hold information in immediate awareness, divide the information into two groups, and shift attentional
resources to the two new ordered sequences.
General Information provided an index of The student's general verbal knowledge. This test has two subtests. In
the first subtest, The student was asked, "Where would you find... (an object)?" In the second subtest, she was
asked, "What would you do with... (an object)?" The initial items involved objects that appear commonly in the
environment. The items became increasingly difficult as the selected objects become more unusual.
Retrieval Fluency measured The student's fluency of retrieval from stored knowledge. She was asked to name as
many examples as possible from a given category within a 1-minute time period. The task consisted of three
different categories: things to eat or drink, first names of people, and animals.
Picture Recognition measured visual memory of objects or pictures. The student's task was to recognize a subset
of previously presented pictures within a field of distracting pictures.
Auditory Attention measured an aspect of speech-sound discrimination-- the ability to overcome the effects of
auditory distortion or masking in understanding oral language. This is an auditory processing ability requiring
selective attention. The student's task was to listen to a word, while seeing four pictures, and then point to the
correct picture for the word. As the test progressed, the task increased in difficulty in two ways: the sound
discriminations became increasingly difficult and added background noise increased in intensity.
Analysis-Synthesis measured The student's ability to reason and draw conclusions from given conditions (or
deductive reasoning). She was given instructions on how to perform an increasingly complex procedure; she was
also given immediate feedback regarding the correctness of each response before a new item was presented.
Decision Speed measured The student's ability to make correct conceptual decisions quickly. In each row, her
task was to locate quickly the two pictures that are most similar conceptually. This test had a 3-minute time limit.
Memory for Words measured The student's short-term auditory memory span. In this test, she was asked to repeat
lists of unrelated words in the correct sequence.
Rapid Picture Naming required naming facility, a form of cognitive fluency. This test measured The student's
speed of direct recall of information from her acquired knowledge. This test had a 2-minute time limit.
Planning provided information about the processes The student used to determine, select, or apply solutions to
problems, such as forethought. On this test, The student was asked to trace a pattern without removing the pencil
from the paper or retracing any lines.
Pair Cancellation provided information about The student's ability to control interferences, sustain her attention,
and stay on task in a vigilant manner. In a 3-minute time period, she was asked to locate and mark a repeated
pattern as quickly as possible.
Letter-Word Identification measured The student's ability to identify letters and words. She was not required to
know the meaning of any word.
Reading Fluency measured The student's ability to quickly read simple sentences, decide if the statement is true,
and then circle Yes or No. She was asked to complete as many items as possible within a 3-minute time limit.
Story Recall measured aspects of The student's oral language ability including language development and
meaningful memory. The task required her to recall increasingly complex stories that were presented using an audio
recording. After listening to a passage, The student was asked to recall as many details of the story as she could
remember.
Understanding Directions required The student to listen to a sequence of audio-recorded instructions and then
follow the directions by pointing to various objects in a picture.
Calculation measured The student's ability to perform mathematical computations.
Math Fluency measured The student's ability to solve simple addition, subtraction, and multiplication facts quickly.
She was presented with a series of simple arithmetic problems to complete in a 3-minute time limit.
Spelling measured The student's ability to print letters and spell words correctly.
Writing Fluency measured The student's skill in formulating and writing simple sentences quickly. She was
required to write sentences relating to a given stimulus picture that includes a set of three words.
This test had a 7-minute time limit.
Passage Comprehension measured The student's ability to understand what she read. Some items involved use
of pictures. The items became increasingly difficult and required The student to read a short passage and identify a
missing key word that made sense in the context of the passage.
Applied Problems measured The student's ability to analyze and solve math problems. To solve the problems, she
was required to listen to the problem, recognize the procedure to be followed, and then perform relatively simple
calculations. Because many of the problems
included extraneous information, The student needed to decide not only the appropriate mathematical operations to
use but also what information to include in the calculation.
Writing Samples measured The student's skill in writing responses to a variety of demands. She was asked to
produce written sentences that were evaluated with respect to the quality of expression. The student was not
penalized for any errors in basic writing skills, such
as spelling or punctuation.
Story Recall--Delayed measured aspects of The student's language development and meaningful memory using
previously presented stories. The task required her to recall the story elements that were previously presented in
Story Recall.
| Dr. Stephen Mouton, Psychological Testing, FAQs, ADHD, Attention Disorders, Learning Disorders, Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, Academic Testing, IQ testing, Intelligence, Math Disorders, Writing Disorders, Concentration Problems, Educational Therapy, Tutors, Special Accommodations SAT, ISEE, ACT, GMAT, MCAT, LSAT, Appeals Office Testing: Psychologist. Beverly Hills, Burbank, Brentwood, Glendale, Sherman Oaks, Santa Monica, Woodland Hills, Pasadena, Newport Beach, Orange County. |
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| Video aired on March 30, 2006 and repeated on March 31, 2006- ABC News: Nightline Video Segments were taped by an ABC News Nightline Camera Crew at Dr. Mouton's Office in Pasadena, California Jake Tapper, Interviewer (Washington), Dan Morris ,Producer (New York) |
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