Language Disorders

The assessment relies on the analysis of any previous reports, clinical observations made during the sessions, and a battery of standardized tests administered in the office in both written and digital formats. Together, these elements provide a detailed, nuanced, and objective understanding of the child’s mental functioning.

The first appointment is usually held with both parents present, without the child. It focuses on an in‑depth discussion of the child’s history, current difficulties, and the parents’ expectations.

This interview aims to:

• Determine whether a diagnostic evaluation is appropriate.

• Clarify the assessment protocol (tests selected based on the information gathered beforehand).

• Present the full evaluation process (number of sessions, duration, report, and feedback session).

• Address any questions the parents may have.

• Establish a trusting environment, essential for minimizing the impact of anxiety on test performance.

It enables the clinician to:

• Establish a reliable differential diagnosis.

• Gain an in-depth understanding of the child’s mental functioning and its impact on daily life.

• Provide tailored recommendations and accommodations for daily life, both at home and at school.

• Recommend appropriate interventions such as cognitive remediation, neuropsychological rehabilitation, orthoptics, speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, or psychotherapy.

Cognitive domains assessed:

• Language functions: 

  • Receptive language: sound, word, sentence, and discourse processing — phonological awareness, lexical-semantic comprehension, morphosyntactic comprehension, and narrative comprehension.

  • Expressive language: sound, word, sentence, and discourse processing — oral-motor skills, lexical-semantic expression, automatic naming, semantic and phonological verbal fluency, grammaticality judgment and correction, and morphosyntactic expression.

• Intellectual abilities: logical, conceptual, and quantitative reasoning.

• Social functions: social perception, social cognition, and social skills.

• Attentional functions: selective and sustained attention.

• Executive functions: cognitive inhibition, cognitive flexibility, working memory, planning.

• Memory functions: short- and long-term memory.

• Visuospatial functions: visuoperceptive and visuospatial abilities in 2D and 3D.

• Sensorimotor functions: lateralization, motor control and programming, sensorimotor coordination.

Learning domains assessed:

• Written Language: reading skills (including phonological and visual processing, word recognition, vocabulary, morphosyntactic understanding, and reading fluency) and writing/transcription skills (phonological and visual processing, as well as phonetic, lexical, linguistic, and morphological spelling).

• Number Sense and Math Skills: counting and quantity concepts, understanding of the numerical system (including analog, visual, and verbal codes, and transcoding), and arithmetic operations and calculations.

Adaptive domains assessed:

• Communication

• Daily living

• Socialization

Psycho-affective domains assessed:

• Emotional state: assessment of anxiety and/or depressive symptoms.

• Personality: assessment of personality organization, including pathological aspects, and identification of any underlying psychological vulnerabilities.

• Autism: analysis of autism-related behaviors, language, communication, and social interactions; autism risk level; autism severity level.