Best Practices in Cross-Battery Assessment of Nonverbal Cognitive Ability

Abstract

This chapter describes the purpose of cross-battery assessment, i.e., to provide psychological assessment specialists/examiners with an overall cognitive assessment strategy. More specifically, it is designed to make examiners aware of the subconstructs of intelligence, as defined by the Cattell–Horn–Carroll Model of intelligence, and to make them aware of how these constructs can be assessed, using the best available operationalizations (of the constructs). Cross-battery assessment principles can be used by examiners to determine cognitive strengths and weaknesses, and is generally considered to provide the steps necessary to complete a very comprehensive evaluation of cognitive abilities. I have adapted the guidelines and principles from McGrew and Flanagan (1998) and Flanagan et al. (2013) for those examiners who engage in nonverbal assessment of cognitive abilities and intelligence. In addition, I provide a listing of the best nonverbal assessment instruments (Appendix 1) and a set of worksheets to guide interpretation of scores obtained from nonverbal cross-battery assessment (Appendix 2). Finally, I provide a case for illustrative purposes in Appendix 3. As is apparent from reading the case, the basic principles and strategies are the same for both verbal and nonverbal assessment, but the number and quality of instruments available for nonverbal assessment are less than for verbal assessment.