Agreement between telehealth and face-to-face assessment of intellectual ability in children with specific learning disorder

Abstract

Introduction Access to cognitive assessments for children living remotely is limited. Telehealth represents a potential cost- and time-effective solution. A pilot study was conducted to determine the feasibility of telehealth to assess cognitive function in children with learning difficulties. Methods Thirty-three children (median age = 9 years 11 months), recruited from the New South Wales (NSW) Centre for Effective Reading, underwent assessment of intellectual ability. Comparisons were made between the intellectual ability index scores obtained by a psychologist sitting face-to-face with the children and another psychologist via telehealth using a web-based platform, Coviu. Results The telehealth administration method yielded comparable results to the face-to-face method. Correlation analyses showed high associations between the testing methodologies on the intellectual ability indices (correlation coefficient range = 0.981-0.997). Discussion Findings indicate that telehealth may be an alternative to face-to-face cognitive assessment. Future work in a broader range of cognitive tests and wider range of clinical populations is warranted.

“How to” operate a pediatric neuropsychology practice during the COVID-19 pandemic: Real tips from one practice’s experience

“…Tele-NP is a rapidly evolving practice; however, relatively limited research is available regarding standardized data for pediatric testing administered via telehealth. To date, we are aware of two published pediatric studies (Hodge et al, 2019;Waite et al, 2010) and one webinar-presented pediatric study from Harder and colleagues (Stolwyk et al, 2020). Hodge and colleagues administered and scored the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children -Fifth Edition (WISC-V, Wechsler, 2014) via telehealth to children located within a clinic setting and also had a secondary in-person scorer.…”

“…Harder and colleagues utilized a counter-balanced design in which each participant completed a brief neuropsychological battery via a traditional in-person evaluation and a telehealth session. Published (Hodge et al, 2019;Waite et al, 2010) and presented (Stolwyk et al, 2020) pediatric studies have included some form of in-person scoring and/or management of the test session. These studies utilized standard normative data and reported that scores did not differ significantly between traditional in-person administration and nonstandard administration via telehealth (Hodge et al, 2019;Waite et al, 2010; Harder and colleagues presented in; Stolwyk et al, 2020).…”

“…Published (Hodge et al, 2019;Waite et al, 2010) and presented (Stolwyk et al, 2020) pediatric studies have included some form of in-person scoring and/or management of the test session. These studies utilized standard normative data and reported that scores did not differ significantly between traditional in-person administration and nonstandard administration via telehealth (Hodge et al, 2019;Waite et al, 2010; Harder and colleagues presented in; Stolwyk et al, 2020). Additionally, recent systematic reviews of tele-NP testing in adult patients provide encouraging findings regarding the feasibility, reliability, and validity of administering traditional neuropsychological measures via telehealth and the utilization of standard normative data (Brearly et al, 2017;Marra et al, 2020), though certainly pediatric neuropsychologists should be cautious to extend adult-derived conclusions to a pediatric population.…”

“…Our clinic strives to provide tele-NP services in accordance with currently available pediatric research (see Hodge et al, 2019;Waite et al, 2010), consideration of adult neuropsychological tele-NP literature (see Marra et al, 2020), the ethics and considerations set forth from the American Psychological Association (APA, 2013), and practice suggestions (see Bilder et al, 2020;IOPC, 2020). In the section below we review multiple tips to support optimal utilization of tele-NP.…”

“…(7) Considerations for Test Selection. Our clinic has utilized the WISC-V given preliminary tele-NP literature (Hodge et al, 2019) (Stolwyk et al, 2020) they utilized mailed forms, though researchers had received a priori permission to do so. Thus, our practice is not currently administering written tasks that require specific stimuli (e.g., WISC-V Coding) or those requiring physical manipulatives via tele-NP (e.g., Grooved Pegboard).…”