Are parents accurate reporters of their child's cognitive abilities?

Examined parent's ability to accurately report their child's cognitive-func tioning. Participants were 145 children and their parents referred to an ou tpatient mental health clinic for cognitive testing. Parent reports were me asured using Likert ratings designed for research and clinical purposes. Ch ildren's cognitive abilities were measured using the Woodcock-Johnson Psych o-Educational Battery-Revised (Woodcock, 1989) and the Wechsler Intelligenc e Scale for Children-Third Edition (Wechsler, 1991). For boys, parental rep orts of general cognitive ability, fluid reasoning, comprehension-knowledge visual processing, auditory processing and acquisition and retrieval were significantly related to performance-based measurements of these same trait s, and parental report of boys' fluid reasoning and visual processing abili ty evidenced specificity. For girls, parental report of general cognitive a bility, fluid reasoning visual processing, and auditory processing were sig nificantly related to performance-based measurements of these same traits, and parental reports of girls visual processing and auditory processing evi denced specificity. These findings suggest areas where clinicians can be mo ve confident of parental report of children's cognitive abilities and other areas where clinicians should be wary of parental report.