Chapter 10
Chapter Focus
Chapter 10 presents common assessment measures of cognitive ability and adaptive behavior.
Classroom teachers may be asked to conduct adaptive behavior assessments, and they should
also understand intelligence tests and how and why they are used.
Check Your Understanding
Activity 10.1
1. Case involving administering tests in a language other than the child’s native language.
2. Case concerning students who were placed in a school for students with emotional
disturbance without the benefit of nondiscriminatory assessment.
3. Standardized norm-referenced assessment of cognitive abilities; the indirect measurement
of the construct of intelligence.
4. When, as the result of discriminatory assessment, minority students are placed in dead-
end educational or vocational tracts.
5. When a test measures different constructs for people of different groups.
6. A test may accurately predict for one group of students but not as accurately for another
group, which results in this.
7. A numerical representation of intellectual ability.
8. When the examiner does not possess skill in communicating in the student’s native
language, it may result in this.
9. Case finding that the use of IQ tests to place black students in classes for persons with
mental retardation was a discriminatory practice.
10. Case finding the same IQ tests to be nondiscriminatory even though a few items were
found to be biased.
Apply Your Knowledge
Summarize how court cases have influenced the use of intelligence tests.
Activity 10.2
1. This instrument has four index scores that measure perceptual reasoning, verbal
comprehension, working memory, and processing speed.
2. This Wechsler test is designed to be used through adulthood.
3. This subtest presents math story problems, and performance can be influenced by
attention span and concentration or working memory.
4. On this subtest, the examiner asks the student how two things are alike.
5. This index score represents the student’s ability to attend and process information in
completing tasks.
6. On this subtest, the examiner provides clues that the student uses to respond with a
specific word.
7. The subtests on this index represent the student’s ability to quickly respond on fine-motor
tasks.
8. This instrument includes subtests that assess tasks believed to measure one’s
simultaneous and successive processing ability on cognitive tasks.
9. This subtest assesses an individual’s perceptual reasoning without requiring the use of
fine-motor skills.
10. Performance on this verbal comprehension subtest can be influenced by the student’s
conscience or moral sense.
11. This subtest is divided into two parts, forward and backward, and measures auditory
short-term memory and freedom from distractibility.
12. This IQ score reflects the performance of the student on all four indices.
13. This Wechsler test was designed to be used with children from the ages of 2 years and 6
months to 7 years and 3 months.
14. Which of the cognitive assessment instruments can be administered to school age
students ages 6–16?
Apply Your Knowledge
1. Which of the subtests described for the Wechsler scales can be influenced by weakness in the
visual-motor areas?
2. This term means that a student processes information one bit at a time, with each new piece of
information linked to the previous bit of information
3. What two broad cognitive abilities are included in the CHC theory of intelligence?
4. Which index might be particularly useful when assessing a student whose primary language is
Spanish?
5. For very young students, what types of scores are available?
Apply Your Knowledge
What type of information is represented on a test that assesses crystallized intelligence?
Activity 10-4
1. What areas appear to represent strengths in cognitive processing?
2. What areas represent the areas of concern?
3. What areas would be of concern to you as a teacher planning instruction?
4. Look at the domain scores. In what way is this student best able to process math?
Apply Your Knowledge
What recommendations would you make to this student’s parents about assignments that need to
be completed at home?
Activity 10-5
1. ___ has a strong theoretical base that includes different ways to interpret the test based on
those theories.
2. ___ is the Wechsler scale that assesses adults.
3. The ___includes both verbal and nonverbal domains.
4. This test includes an attentional domain.
Apply Your Knowledge
When would a school psychologist give more than one measure of cognitive evaluation for an
initial evaluation?
Activity 10-6
1. Adaptive behavior is the ability to ___.
2. Assessments of adaptive behavior may be used to ___.
3. According to Reschly (1982), what are the four concepts of the assessment of adaptive
behavior?
Apply Your Knowledge
What research findings about adaptive behavior were summarized by Harrison (1987)?
Think Ahead Exercises
1. Because many of the instruments used to assess intelligence and achievement include
numerous items of a verbal nature, the assessment of students whose primary language is
not English should be given a(n) ___ measure in addition to other measures.
2. IDEA includes statements of determining eligibility that require the team to exclude ___
as the primary reason for a disability before determining a student eligible for special
education services.
3. Minority students who may appear to be within the range of mental retardation on
measures developed for use with students from the majority culture may not be within the
range of mental retardation on ___ measures.
4. Students who have a dominant language other than English are often referred to as being
bilingual, and students whose primary language is English and nonstandard English are
referred to as ___.
5. Bilingual students may have difficulty with both the language items on standardized
assessments and the level of ___ required to perform well on the items.
6. Once the standardized assessment has been completed, an examiner may use the method
of __, incorporating teaching, to determine the student’s potential to learn failed items.
7. The measure of ___ is actually a ratio comparing a student’s mental age and
chronological age.
Chapter 10 Test Bank
True and False
1. In special education, it is clearly understood how to determine intelligence through
assessment.
2. When assessing students from culturally different backgrounds, the use of adaptive
behavior scores is one possible method of reducing bias.
3. The Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale measures overall cognitive ability.
4. IDEA requires that adaptive behavior be assessed when evaluating students to determine
the presence of learning disabilities.
5. The Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales is a nonverbal measure of intellectual ability.
6. When assessing students who have linguistic differences, a fair assessment of cognitive
abilities may include administering a nonverbal measure.
7. IQ scores are measurements of innate potential in a person.
8. Although IQ testing is controversial, it remains a valid indicator of student performance
in academic tasks.
9. Care should be taken when choosing an adaptive behavior scale, as some scales may have
norms that better represent the demographics of the student currently being assessed.
10. The theories upon which IQ tests are based influence their use and interpretation.
Multiple Choice
1. Which of the following statements about intellectual assessment is true?
A. Experts in the field of intellectual assessment have different definitions of
intelligence.
B. Experts in the field of intellectual assessment believe that intelligence is the
most important factor in assessment.
C. Experts in the field of intellectual assessment have targeted specific tests that
completely eliminate bias.
D. Experts in the field of intellectual assessment do not think intellectual
assessment is predictive of anything of significance.
2. The influence of one culture on another culture is known as which of the following?
A. Acculturation
B. Environmental influence
C. Adaptive behavior
D. Innate potential
3. Which of the following individuals developed the theory of multiple intelligences?
A. B.F. Skinner
B. Sigmund Freud
C. David Wechsler
D. Howard Gardner
4. Which of the following batteries was designed to assess nonverbal intelligence?
A. UNIT
B. CTONI 2
C. TONI-3
D. All of the above
5. Which of the following instruments is designed to assess intellectual functioning using a
theory of simultaneous and successive processing?
A. Stanford-Binet IV
B. WISC-IV
C. K-ABC-II
D. All of the above
6. Which of the following types of intellectual assessment instruments are more commonly
used with children who are bilingual?
A. Acculturation
B. Nonverbal instruments
C. English verbal instrument
D. All of the above
7. On the Stanford-Binet V, the factors assessed include:
A. Verbal and nonverbal
B. Verbal only
C. Nonverbal only
D. None of the above
8. Using the WISC-V, which of the following contributes to strength in the area of verbal
comprehension?
A. Similarities
B. Picture concepts
C. Letter-number sequencing
D. All of the above
9. In the Cattell-Horn-Carol theory of intelligence, which of the following constitutes its
foundation of intellectual ability?
A. General intellectual functioning
B. Broad cognitive abilities
C. Narrow abilities of cognitive functioning
D. All of the above
10. When using the AAMR Adaptive Behavior Scale-School, Second Edition (ABS-S2), the
process of determining whether persons meet the criteria for the diagnosis of mental
retardation is divided into which of the following two parts:
A. Academic achievement and social behavior
B. Academic achievement and independent living skills
C. Independent living skills and social behavior
D. None of the above
11. When a child obtains a significantly low score on an IQ test and this is determined to be a
valid estimate of the student’s ability, it usually means:
A. The student will likely have difficulty in school without interventions.
B. This will not have an impact on educational achievement.
C. This child will always require self-contained special education support.
D. The student should probably not be permitted to attend school.
12. Assessing one’s ability to function in various environments requires measuring which of
the following?
A. Achievement
B. Intelligence
C. Adaptive behavior
D. Cognitive ability
13. Historically, the formula used to calculate IQ is
A. MA / CA x 100
B. CA – MA x 100
C. 100 – CA x MA
D. 100 – MA x CA
14. This type of assessment views the ceiling as an area of functioning that warrants further
investigation.
A. Intelligence testing
B. Achievement testing
C. Adaptive behavior assessment
D. Dynamic assessment
15. Administering subtests from two or more tests to determine if a weakness exists in a
particular skill or ability is a practice consistent with which of the following?
A. Dynamic assessment
B. Adaptive behavior assessment
C. Cross battery assessment
D. None of the above
16. The mean score and standard deviation for the WISC-V are which of the following,
respectively?
A. 80, 15
B. 90, 10
C. 100, 10
D. 100, 15
17. Which of the following people may fill out an adaptive behavior assessment?
A. Teacher
B. Parent
C. Job coach
D. All of the above
18. The use of intelligence tests remains controversial in part because of inappropriate use in
the past. Which of the following represents a major court case that has involved the
assessment of intellectual ability?
A. Larry P. v. Riles
B. PASE v. Hannon
C. Both A and B
D. Neither A nor B
19. Intelligence testing is likely to remain a substantial part of the assessment process
because of which of the following?
A. Our objective knowledge of what constitutes intelligence
B. A known correlation between scores on IQ tests and school achievement
C. The proven validity of IQ tests for all students
D. All of the above