Often, informal testing can provide insights into someone’s strengths and weaknesses that can be missed when only standardized tests are used. This is because standardized tests must be administered in a specific way (that may or may not work well for the examinee) so that results can be compared to the performances of other people. To better evaluate someone’s strengths and weaknesses, Dr. Van Santen can create informal testing to meet the needs of the person being tested to then identify why he/she/they performed the way they did on a particular test.

For example, let’s say that a twelve-year-old was having difficulty during a test that required him to explain how two words were alike (e.g., How are a dog and a cat alike? - they are both animals). He might have difficulty explaining the general relationship between the words (e.g., he says, “A cat and a dog are alike.”). He performs poorly on the formal test. Afterward, he can be given similar types of test items in a different format. This time, the items may be framed like this…

A cat and a mouse are both ____________.

…and is then asked to fill in the blanks. The child may be able to answer many more of these questions correctly, demonstrating that he has the ability to use his reasoning skills to perceive the concepts in terms of superordinate categories. His score on the formal version of this test would indicate that he had difficulty doing this. The results (combined with results from many other tasks) can suggest that - even though he has the reasoning skills necessary to perform the task - it can be hard for him to explain his answers because of weaknesses related expressive language and task comprehension.