Many of y’all know that I have been using TherapyNotes as our practice EHR for over 10 years now. I’ve looked at others and I just keep coming back to TherapyNotes because they do it all. If you’re interested in an EHR for your practice, you can get 2 free months of TherapyNotes by going to thetestingpsychologist.com/therapynotes and enter the code “testing”.
This podcast is brought to you in part by PAR.
Hey, guess what y’all, the BRIEFA has been updated. The BRIEF2A is the latest update to the BRIEF2 family. Use the gold standard in executive functioning assessment to assess adult clients. You can pre-order it now. Visit parinc.com/products/brief2a.
Hey folks, welcome back to The [00:01:00] Testing Psychologist podcast. I’m excited to be here with you. Today is another somewhat unique episode because it is accompanied by a YouTube video. Today, I am doing an unboxing of the WAIS-5.
As you know, the WAIS-5 has recently begun to ship and people are getting excited about it. So I would definitely encourage that you go check out the YouTube video for the full experience, but you can have the audio-only experience here if you would prefer that route.
So listen in, I go over the basics of the WAIS-5, what’s new, what’s updated, and my first impressions as I look through all the materials and take everything out of the box, and actually think about using the test on a day-to-day basis.
If you’re interested in the WAIS-5, you can go to the Pearson website and order the test. Q-Interactive will be out soon. In the meantime, enjoy this [00:02:00] unboxing podcast/YouTube video.
Hello everyone. Welcome to a special episode of sorts of The Testing Psychologist. Today, as you can see, I am accompanied by this beautiful box that contains the WAIS-5. As we all know, anyone in the assessment world, this is a huge deal. The release of a brand new intelligence test, let alone a Wechsler Intelligence Test, is something that happens very infrequently.
In our world, this is basically like the Super Bowl, a new Beyonce album, and Christmas all wrapped up into one event. So today I’m going to be doing an unboxing of the WAIS-5. [00:03:00] We’re going to check things out from an aesthetic perspective and a practical perspective. The hope is to give you a good idea of what to expect when your WAIS-5 kit arrives and what to do with it after that. Let’s get into it.
Before I do, I want to make two quick notes. First note is that this is meant to be an unboxing video. I want to make sure and be clear that I have not administered the WAIS-5 to any actual clients yet, so this is purely a hands-on experience and a walkthrough of what’s in the kit and what you can expect as far as changes and updates to the WAIS-5.
I’m sure there are plenty of reviews that are going to come out after folks have started to use it with clients and I look forward to those, but today is not the day for that particular style of review. Similarly, I am not going to get in the weeds on the psychometric properties [00:04:00] of the WAIS-5. I think there are plenty of folks out there who are much more qualified than I am to have that discussion. I will leave that to them.
For our discussion today, I’m just going to go through what’s in the kit, some of the major updates, my experience so far just from walking through the materials and what I anticipate to be the pros and cons whenever we do start to administer with actual clients, but again, I’m not going to be getting super granular with the psychometrics and research and things like that.
There’s plenty of information, both in the technical manual and again, from other folks who are way more involved with the project and skilled, frankly, at those kinds of discussions. All right, folks, let’s get to the actual unboxing here.
As far as the literal box that the WAIS-5 comes in, you can see it’s pretty standard. It is a relatively sturdy box, or at least it seems to be. So if you are not planning to buy a [00:05:00] soft case or a hard sided case to keep the WAIS-5 in, you should probably be able to keep it on the shelf in this box for a fairly long period of time. I don’t think it’s going to be disintegrating after 2 months or anything like that but for long-term use, you’re definitely going to want to get a case for it.
As far as the actual box and what comes in it, that’s the important part. As you could see when it was sitting upright, colors have changed just a little bit. Like I said, I’m paying attention to aesthetics, certainly. So a little bit of a darker blue, I’m a big fan of a dark navy blue. Glad to see this. They darken the color just a bit.
The font is a little bit different on the script or the typeface for the WAIS-5 but beyond that, not a whole lot to speak of aesthetically, at least at this point, but let’s dig into it. [00:06:00] When you open your kit, my guess is it’s going to look very similar to this one. I repacked the kit exactly as it came to me so that we could have complete fidelity for this unboxing, plastic removal aside. So let’s get into this.
Right off the bat, you’re going to notice a box that feels very familiar. The color of the box did change, or the color of the sticker on the box, and this caught my attention right away. I ran down the hall to one of my psychologists and said, don’t freak out but they changed the color of the sticker on the blocks box. So first thing that you notice there’s that dark navy looks good.
Not going to open the box because test security just in case, but suffice it to say the blocks inside are the same color that we are all very used to. So set our blocks over there. We’ve got some more manipulatives coming in. We’ve got manipulatives [00:07:00] for the Spatial Addition subtest.
I’ll talk about subtests in a bit, and the updates and changes to those subtests, but suffice it to say that we’ve got the manipulatives for Spatial Addition, this will sound familiar if you are familiar with the WMS but we’ve got the little circles; the discs, there are various colors in here.
It seems like a relatively well-made plastic pouch. I’m sure like everything else, it will break in time, but you can see here, we’ve got our discs in their own individual bag and little pouch to snap shut. So that should keep these discs corralled, so they’re not going to be bouncing around or rolling away like some of the other materials you may have encountered.
All right, let’s keep moving on. I’m going to jump over here to likely our best friend in this whole kit, the administration and scoring manual. I [00:08:00] have to say it was quite an experience to open a brand new admin and scoring manual and hear it creak as I opened it.
The creak might be gone. That was maybe a first opening experience, but admin and scoring manual. It’s going to be very familiar to what we have encountered in the past with Wechsler tests. I’ll go into the subtests in a bit, but just want to say the manual itself, pretty standard, slight updates to the aesthetics and the design here, but nothing major.
All right, we are going to keep moving. I’m going to grab this guy next, we got our technical interpretive manual. If y’all are like me, you maybe have not spent as much time with the technical and interpretive manuals as you should over the years, but I’ll tell you this, I did dive relatively deep into the technical and interpretive manual this time around just to familiarize myself with many of the items and [00:09:00] subtests and research and so forth.
I would advise you to do the same. There’s a lot of good material in the technical manual as many of you know. If you are holding off or thought you might skip it, I would advise against that. Dive into the technical manual. It’s written pretty well. I think there’s maybe more of an effort to make it more readable and I don’t know if I go so far as to say enjoyable, but I did find it easier to read than some other technical manuals.
All right, folks, what is next? Of course, we have our Stimulus books. My books are in reverse order so I will rearrange them a bit. We’ve got Stimulus Book 1; it’s got five of our subtests in there. They’re going to sound very familiar: Block Design, Matrix Reasoning, Vocabulary, Figure Weights, and Visual Puzzles.
I’m not going to open these books, of course, test security, but I think we’ve all seen a Stimulus book. We know what these are for. Stimulus Book 2 is going to have [00:10:00] Arithmetic, Symbol Span, Naming Speed Quantity and Set Relations. We are moving on. We’ve got Stimulus Book 3, which has Spatial Addition, and that concludes our Stimulus books.
What else do we have in here? Ah, yes, we can’t forget this. We all know we had an unsharpened pencil with no eraser is very important in the administration of many of these tests. Pearson was kind enough to send us an unsharpened pencil without an eraser. So make sure you have a pencil sharpener to turn that into a usable object.
All right, let’s move on. We’ve got some record forms here. I’m going to talk about the record form in just a bit and some of the updates there, but for now, you can just take a gander at the record form. Again, I will say, this is not going to be a brand new material. For the most part, you are going to feel right at home [00:11:00] when you check out the record form for the WAIS-5.
Same goes for the response booklets. We’ve got the response booklets. If anybody was concerned that your kit might not come with record forms or response booklets, don’t worry about that. You’re going to be in good shape. You could theoretically open this box and administer a WAIS-5 within 15 minutes or so, theoretically, I wouldn’t advise it as I will talk about in just a bit, but theoretically you could do that.
And then last but not least, we have our scoring keys. So when you get your kit, if it is like mine, the scoring keys are actually separate. They are not all contained in this envelope, but I am not going to show them individually for test security sake but you can rest assured there are scoring keys for all the things that we might need; Coding, Symbol Search and Running Digits, which is a new subtest that we will talk about.
[00:12:00] That’s it for the unboxing treatment of the WAIS-5. I hope you enjoyed this portion of the video. I’m going to clean this stuff up and we’ll be right back with you with more of a discussion about the updates and what to expect on a daily practical basis.Okay, everybody, we are back. We are cleaned up and ready to talk a little bit more about the updates and the changes that you’re going to see in theWAIS-5 but first, let’s talk about headlines; the big items that people are likely curious about.
So release date, by the time you see this video, the WAIS-5 paper kits should be shipping. You can order them on Pearson’s website and they should ship out immediately and get there at whatever speed you choose with your shipping.
Q-global scoring is also available. So you can manually score with the kit or you can use Q-global to enter the scores from the paper and pencil kit and get the digital report [00:13:00] through Q-global.
I know people are very curious about Q-interactive, if you’re like us, we do a lot of Q-interactive administration here in our practice, and Q-interactive version of the WAIS-5 is going to be released on September 20th. That’s the plan right now. So by the time you see this video, we’re going to be very close to that date, if not already past that date.
There’s your release date information. If you are anxious to get the paper kit, go for it. If you’re holding out for Q-interactive, it should not be too long.
Let’s get to some of the clinical aspects of the WAIS-5. Lots of updates here. I’m sure you’ve heard of some of these updates just from watching webinars or reading some of the materials that Pearson has distributed over the last several months, but I’m going to run down some of the big picture highlights, and then we’ll get a little bit more granular with some of the updates and things that you can expect.
First and maybe most [00:14:00] importantly, the norms are updated. So updated norms were collected over the last few years, primarily in 2023 and 2024. The age range is still the same. We’re looking at 16 years old and 0 months all the way up to 90 years old and 11 months.
If you want to dive deep into the demographic information, I will say it’s available on page 45 of the technical manual. If you don’t, I can let you know that the normative sample was mirrored pretty closely to the U.S. census from 2022, I believe.
The table in the technical manual breaks down all the norm groups and the percentages of each based on education, age, sex, racial and ethnic identity. I think those are the four factors that we’re looking at when we consider the norm group.
So updated [00:15:00] norms, this is huge. I think this is one of the biggest concerns with any measure as it gets to be 10, 15 years old, or even more but we have updated norms. Great place to start.
As for the test itself, there are a number of noteworthy changes. I will say right off the bat that if you are familiar with the WISC-V or the WMS, that many of these changes will feel pretty comfortable, but I’m going to go into them just to make sure what to expect here.
Big picture, it’s going to be a shorter administration time. The manual says that you can get a Full Scale IQ, which is 7 of the primary subtests in about 45 minutes, and then if you administer all 10 of the primary subtests, you should be able to do that in about 60 minutes.
I will note as well that there is a table in the administration manual that lists the average administration times per [00:16:00] subtest. It’s also stratified by age and suspected or anticipated IQ, I believe. So it varies slightly based on those factors, but you can check out that table if you’re really interested in learning what the average administration times per subtest might be.
Another thing that you want to be aware of is there are going to be higher start points for suspected gifted individuals. This higher start point is going to be marked by a little box that says SIG in it within the record form. It’s the same as all the other start points that we are used to, but it’s just marked slightly differently. So look for that SIG, pretty easy to find. I believe that stands for suspected intellectually gifted.
So we’re going to have higher start points. Hopefully, we don’t have to slog through some of those lower items for folks who we suspect to be gifted. So that will be good. That should [00:17:00] save us some time.
Another touted benefit of the WAIS-5 is what they call simplified administration and scoring instructions. I will say, I don’t know that I found this to necessarily be obvious when I was looking through the administration and scoring manual, but your knowledge may vary and if you disagree with me, I would welcome those reports and let me know how you find these instructions to be simplified.
I’m not saying they’re complex by any means, but I didn’t notice them to be overly simplified or noticeably more simple than what we’ve been used to in past versions of the test. There are many clinical updates. Like I hinted at earlier, I think a lot of these mirror what we’ve seen in the WISC-V so far, for those of us who are familiar with working with kids and doing the WISC-V.
The biggest thing is probably that we now have a five index model to be working with [00:18:00] here in the WAIS-5. So the five index model was developed following research after the WISC-IV and the WAIS-IV were published. They found that there’s actually a five-factor model of the indexes that better captures the data.
I’m not going to get into the weeds with whether this is necessarily the right structure for an intelligence test or the research behind that, I’m just simply reflecting that decision making process but I will say, it is very familiar for those of us who’ve used the WISC-V for years.
The big difference is that the Perceptual Reasoning Index has been split into Fluid Reasoning and Visual Spatial Index. So make sure and check that out. It’s going to be pretty comfortable for anyone who’s done a lot of WISC-Vs but that’s a big factor here with the WAIS-5, is that we now have a five [00:19:00] index model, which I like.
Within the indexes, Working Memory is richer, so to speak. There are now more aspects of Working Memory that are being measured. The primary Working Memory subtests are still going to be Auditory, but they got rid of Arithmetic as a primary Working Memory subtest, which makes sense. It was seemingly confounded pretty heavily by math ability.
So now we’ve just got two Auditory Working Memory subtests as the primary index subtests, and then there are visual and spatial and capacity measures of Working Memory as well. So you will have a lot more choice in Working Memory subtests here in the WAIS-5.
I will say though that this might be the most unfamiliar area for those of us who are moving to the WAIS-5
within the Working Memory Index, simply because the two subtests there are both [00:20:00] newish. One of them, Digit Sequencing used to be a part of Digit Span, so it’s familiar. You’re going to know how to do it, but it’s now a standalone subtest. So just know that before you get into the WAIS-5 and try to administer it.
The other subtest, Running Digits, is completely new subtest. I think it will feel relatively familiar just because it’s in that same vein as, it’s an Auditory Working Memory task that involves numbers, but the scoring is different and it’s measuring a slightly different construct.
I think the main thing is, at least in my run through, there is manipulative that you’re going to be working with as you’re scoring the Running Digit subtest. It’s an overlay that it’s over the book and it’s more to manage during the administration, like something else that you’re going to be you balancing in your hands and negotiating on the desk.
So just know that. [00:21:00] I think of all the indexes, like I said, Working Memory is probably going to be the one that requires the most practice as we move along.
Let’s take a break to hear from our featured partner.
Y’all know that the BRIEF2 has long been established as one of the leading forms for measuring executive functioning in children. Now comes the latest addition to the BRIEF-2 to family, the BRIEF2A. This update will allow you to use the gold standard in executive functioning to assess adult clients. You don’t have to wait, it’s available for pre-order right now. Learn more at parinc.com/products/brief2a.
Y’all know that I love TherapyNotes, but I am not the only one. They have a 4.9 out of 5-star rating on trustpilot.com and Google, which makes them the number one rated electronic health record system available for mental health folks today. They make [00:22:00] billing, scheduling, note taking and telehealth all incredibly easy. They also offer custom forms that you can send through the portal.
For all the prescribers out there, TherapyNotes is proudly offering ePrescribe as well. And maybe the most important thing for me is that they have live telephone support 7 days a week so you can actually talk to a real person in a timely manner. If you’re trying to switch from another EHR, the transition is incredibly easy. They’ll import your demographic data free of charge so you can get going right away.
So if you’re curious or you want to switch or you need a new EHR, try TherapyNotes for 2 months, absolutely free. You can go to thetestingpsychologist.com/therapynotes and enter the code “testing”. Again, totally free, no strings attached. Check it out and see why everyone is switching to TherapyNotes.
Let’s get back to the podcast.
There are [00:23:00] also expanded index scores. There’s a lot more information on discrepancies between index scores. You can dive a little deeper into those. There’s going to be more emphasis on ancillary indexes as well. So we’ve got a Nonverbal Index, Nonmotor Index, Motor Reduced Processing Speed.
There are ancillary indexes for crystallized and fluid intelligence. So some of these are going to be carried over from the WAIS-IV, some of them are going to be new. The good news is that you’re going to be able to find all of them really easily on the record form, which I’ll talk about here in 2 minutes.
In terms of subtest-specific information, let’s start with the ones that are going to be pretty familiar to you or well-known. I think the WAIS-5 carried over 13 subtests from the WAIS-IV that are going to be similar or nearly identical, but I’ll run through a few of them that are more well-known, some of the primary subtests, just to give you an idea of what to expect.
[00:24:00] So with Similarities. Similarities is going to be very similar. They did change some items, of course. They updated many of the word pairs, but many of them are going to feel very familiar at the same time. So it’s not like you’re going to look at Similarities and not know where you’re at or how to score them.Many familiar items, some that are brand new.
Vocabulary, kind of the same way. I would say, I didn’t do the math, but it struck me as maybe 40% new items, 60% familiar items. It seemed to me just in looking through Vocabulary, I’m sure others can verify this that more of the new items came into play toward the end of the subtest. So as we got toward the ceiling in Vocabulary, more of the words were new.
Information, I was glad to see the questions updated in Information. I think there was a lot of attention paid here [00:25:00] to update the questions to make them appropriate. In my opinion, it seems like we have fewer science questions and many more factual or trivia-based questions that center more around maybe people, places, history, geography, and that kind of thing versus science-based questions.
Again, others could verify this, but that’s just my layperson’s opinion here as I look through the WAIS-5 items. So Information has been updated pretty significantly.
Arithmetic is no longer a primary subtest, like I mentioned, but you’ll be happy to know there are some new questions, there are some new numbers, there are some new names. The question structure and the concepts that are being measured are still pretty similar, but again, updated numbers, updated names.
Last but not least in the familiar subtests, Comprehension not primary subtest but a lot of us will be grateful to know that the [00:26:00] Comprehension items have been updated, and to me, they feel less antiquated. There is still one question that I think people are going to take issue with and say, is that something that people are super familiar with nowadays, but many of those questions were updated and I think they did a good job with those updates.
Those are the well-known subtests that I think you’ll be able to ease into pretty easily. What about the new subtests? I will say right off the bat, there’s only one new subtest that is a primary subtest, and that is Running Digits.
I mentioned this earlier, this is part of the Working Memory Index, and it measures auditory working memory and requires flexibility in information processing and a progressive shift of attention, is what the materials say. I think you’ll find it relatively easy to administer, but again, there’s a manipulative component on the scoring side [00:27:00] that you’ll have to be aware of.
Set Relations is a new Fluid Reasoning subtest that gets into deductive reasoning and logical thinking. In my perspective, it starts out like Matrix Reasoning then moves into more of a verbal format instead of the visual format that I think we’re used to with Matrix Reasoning. Not a tough transition and administration looks to be pretty straightforward.
Naming Speed Quantity, I was excited to see Naming Speed Quantity. This is a new processing speed subtest that measures numerical processing fluency and the ability to recognize and label quantities efficiently. I wouldn’t get thrown off by the numerical component. It’s very simple and straightforward.
This is a good rapid naming test. It’s very similar to other rapid naming tests that you have seen on other measures. It’s slightly different with that numerical component versus say, [00:28:00] a color or simple word but pretty equivalent in terms of the simplicity and straightforwardness of that numerical naming.
I was excited to see Naming Speed Quantity. I think it’s great to have another processing speed subtest that does not have any motor components whatsoever.
Another two subtests that we’ll talk about, if you are familiar with the WMS, these are also going to be very familiar to you. So Spatial Addition, this is a visual working memory subtest that looks at spatial working memory and storage, and you have to manipulate some of the information and ignore competing stimuli.
So to me, Spatial Addition is like Zoo Locations from the WPPSI, but just on steroids and a lot more complicated from an administration standpoint and a client standpoint, but it will be relatively straightforward, especially if you’ve done it on the WMS. If not, I would absolutely practice this one before [00:29:00] you jump into the WAIS-5. It’s not a primary subtest, so you may not need to do that.
Symbol Span is the last new subtest that I want to talk about. Symbol Span is another visual working memory subtest. It is very similar to Picture Span on WISC-V if you’re familiar with that, but it uses symbols instead of pictures.
Alright, let’s transition to more of the granular stuff and observations from looking through the manual and the record forms. Let’s dive into the manual and the record forms.
You might be thinking, Jeremy, why are we talking about the manual and the record forms? These are boring. Everybody knows what’s going on here but I will say, just having the opportunity to walk through a brand new test with fresh eyes, it is nice to appreciate some of the updates to both of these things.
There are a few important aspects [00:30:00] of both the manual and the record form that are worth talking about. First of all, in the admin manual, on page 2, there are a list of abbreviations of the subtests and the indexes. Indexes are easy, subtests, not so much.
There are many two-letter abbreviations for the subtests. They’re going to be used throughout the WAIS-5 materials and so you’ll want to get familiar with those abbreviations because you’re going to see them over and over.
Even going through the materials a little bit that I have so far, I will say there was frequent checking back, what’s the abbreviation? What’s that mean? And so getting familiar with those is going to be important and just helpful.
On pages 25 and 26 of admin manual, it will tell you the average time to administer the subtests, like I mentioned. I think this is helpful [00:31:00] information. You can refer back to it, especially in the beginning before you get your feet underneath you with the WAIS-5.
If you’re using Q-interactive, of course, you will get that information built into the software and the app, but if you’re doing paper and pencil, it can be nice just to know how much time to expect. And for those of us that bill insurance, there are always questions about how much time should I be taking to administer the subtest or this full test. So you can get that information here and get a good ballpark for at least what Pearson anticipates as far as administration time for all these subtests.
Page 29, there’s an important note that was tucked away that I would think might need to be highlighted. It said, and I hope I’m interpreting this right, but it said, to always administer Digits Forward before you administer Digit Sequencing, even though Digits [00:32:00] Forward is not part of the Full Scale IQ primary subtest list.
So some of you might skip over it because it’s not part of that primary subtest list but the admin manual did specify that we need to always administer Digits Forward before Digit Sequencing. There’s something about this that just feels odd, so if there’s anyone out there who has better information or if I’ve read that wrong, please let me know.
All right, let’s jump over to the record form. So record form, as you can see, pretty familiar but there are two changes. The biggest one is that right here on the front, instead of that scoring rubric that we’re used to, that’s now in the back and here on the front, we have a summary the composite structure and primary indexes, ancillary indexes, and all the subtests that flow into each of those [00:33:00] indexes and the composite structure.
So you can check that out. It’s right here on the front. I think that’s helpful. It’s really nice. It’s got the new subtests. It’s got the five indexes and so forth.
If we flip to the back, you can see all of the manual scoring rubric information is back here in the back. The primary analysis page is going to have a lot more information on here. Specifically, and this came straight from Pearson just as comparison to the mean index score and mean scaled scores before pairwise comparison to reduce Type I error in discrepancy comparisons.
So definitely check that out. And then on the ancillary summary page, it has the index scores, including all the expanded index scores that I mentioned earlier for each of the five factors in case you have big discrepancies between two subtests [00:34:00] on a primary index score.
As far as the record form itself and just some observations that I had, I’m not going to open the record form, test security very important here but I noticed that it does give the reading rate of items which is helpful. This is a slight update from our small update from the WAIS-IV. So it tells you at what pace you should be reading the test items. I think that’s helpful just to have it there. You’re going to learn it very quickly within the first probably three to five administrations, but it’s nice to have it there in case you need it.
What else? The only thing that I noticed is, this could be complete imagination on my part, but it seems like the paper is a little bit more flexible and it feels a little nicer in my hand. I could be totally making that up though.
In summary, what are we looking at here? My initial thoughts are that this is a positive update. [00:35:00] There is a lot of familiarity here, especially if you are used to the WISC-V and the WMS-IV or WMS-V. I think you’re going to find a lot of comfort in these new subtests and it’s not going to be a huge learning curve for you. If you have used some of these other measures, I think you’re going to be right at home.
That said, I told my practice this morning, that this is definitely a test that you are going to want to practice before you administer it the first time, if for nothing else than the Working Memory subtests and just making sure that you have a handle on how to administer and score those new Working Memory subtests.
The others, I think you could probably wing it. I hate to say that. I know that’s not the right thing to say but if you had to, you could probably wing the other ones. I know that you’d be scoring after the fact and it would be clunky and slow. Of course, you should [00:36:00] be totally familiar with all the new items, particularly in Similarities and Vocabulary and so forth.
I wouldn’t advise just leaping into it. You probably could, don’t do that. You should practice. I told my team, let’s practice at least five good times with especially those Working Memory subtests, and make sure that we’ve got a handle on that. So don’t just try to wing it one morning when you’re feeling crazy and super motivated to get into this new WAIS-5.
I mentioned the Running Digits subtest. I think it will take a little getting used to, nothing too wild, but definitely put some time into that and make sure you’re familiar with it.
One other note, if you are doing supplementary subtests and you aren’t familiar with the WMS, especially Spatial Addition, I think that’s going to require a lot of practice as well, just to make sure that you’re doing things as you should. [00:37:00] I would compare it maybe to D-KEFS Tower.
There are other subtests that are similar too, but just know it’s something where you’re going to have to be dealing with a fair number of manipulatives and know exactly where to place things and when to place them. So make sure you practice that if you’re going to be doing some of those supplementary subtests.
Overall, I think first impressions of the WAIS-5 are positive. There are enough updates to subtest items that I think it feels more modern. I don’t want to know that I go so far as to say that it feels completely updated and modern, but I don’t know that that’s actually possible with the pattern and progress of test development.
These tests are in development 5, sometimes 10 years, sometimes more, and it’s really hard to anticipate what’s going to be happening culturally, societally, and what’s going to be considered “modern” or updated by the time everything is finished. [00:38:00] So a lot of kudos to the team.
I think it’s a more modern update, and we’ll be able to notice that. It definitely does not feel as antiquated as the WAIS-IV did, which is appropriate. We’ve crossed a major threshold in our society with technology, smartphones, internet of everything, all of those things, and there were no glaring outliers in the questions that I thought, oh my gosh, this is completely irrelevant. And so a modern enough update.
I also didn’t see any subtests right off the bat that are going to be a huge pain in the ass to administer their goodness. I know there are many of those subtests out there. We’ve all had that experience with different subtests.
I didn’t see any, at least, in my cursory look through materials without having done it on an actual client, I didn’t see anything that right off the bat told me, okay, I’m going to hate this after 7 times or 27 times or 97. [00:39:00] Actually, maybe we probably hate everything after 97 times, but you get what I’m saying. Nothing right off the bat that seems like a total pain.
Just to recap, folks, WAIS-5 is going to be available by the time you see this video. You can order the paper and pencil kit. If you don’t want to score manually, you can score on Q-global and print out single score reports. If you want to hold out for Q-interactive, that’s going to be released on September 20th. All of this is happening on the Pearson website. You can go and order from there.
I would love to hear your experience as always. If you have comments or thoughts, if you want to fact-check me on any of the things that I presented here in the video, feel free to do so and send me your experiences. I think there’s going to be a lot of discussion around the WAIS-5 and my hope is that it’s a generally positive update for those of us here in the testing world. So thanks for tuning into this unboxing [00:40:00] and happy testing.
All right, y’all. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode, always grateful to have you here. I hope that you take away some information that you can implement in your practice and in your life. Any resources that we mentioned during the episode will be listed in the show notes so make sure to check those out.
If you like what you hear on the podcast, I would be so grateful if you left a review on iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcast.
If you’re a practice owner or aspiring practice owner, I’d invite you to check out The Testing Psychologist mastermind groups. I have mastermind groups at every stage of practice development; beginner, intermediate and advanced. We have homework, we have accountability, we have support, we have resources. These groups are amazing. We do a lot of work and a lot of connecting.
If that sounds interesting to you, you can check out the details at thetestingpsychologist.com/consulting. You can sign [00:41:00] up for a pre-group phone call, we will chat and figure out if a group could be a good fit for you. Thanks so much.
The information contained in this podcast and on The Testing Psychologist website are intended for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast or on the website is intended to be a substitute for professional, psychological, psychiatric, or medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
Please note that no doctor-patient relationship is formed here and similarly, no supervisory or consultative relationship is formed between the host or guests of this podcast and listeners of this podcast. [00:42:00] If you need the qualified advice of any mental health practitioner or medical provider, please seek one in your area. Similarly, if you need supervision on clinical matters, please find a supervisor with expertise that fits your needs.