ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the assessment of children and young people who would traditionally have been called ‘mentally handicapped’. Mental handicap is operationally defined as sub-average intellectual functioning, existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behaviour and manifested in the developmental period. Norm-referenced tests provide information about where an individual lies on a particular ability or attainment in comparison with peers of the same age. Children with severe learning difficulties have frequently been overlooked when designing more formal assessment procedures. Criterion-referenced tests are concerned with some previously specified criterion of performance. Norm-referenced tests and artificially elicited behaviours for criterion-referenced tests pose specific problems for this client group. Assessment and treatment can be seen as a cyclical activity. The selection of appropriate assessment materials depends on knowledge of the individual’s problem and observation of behaviours so as to develop and test hypotheses which lead to treatment planning.
