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Los Angeles Center for Integrated Assessment - LACIA

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Los Angeles Center for Integrated Assessment - LACIA

We are a boutique psychological assessment practice specializing in whole-person evaluations.

Dr. Allison Kawa is a licensed clinical psychologist and the Clinical Director at the Los Angeles Center for Integrated Assessment (LACIA). She specializes in conducting comprehensive assessments of children, adolescents, and emerging adults. Dr. Kawa's approach to evaluations is informed by decades of work with individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders, formal training in object relations theory, and cutting-edge research in the field of interpersonal neurobiology. Her areas of expertise include child and adolescent development, diagnosis and treatment planning for neurodevelopmental disorders (e.g., ADHD, learning disorders, processing disorders, etc.) as well as psychiatric issues (e.g., anxiety, depression, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder), and assessment of individuals with trauma. Dr. Kawa also has clinical interests and expertise in autism spectrum disorders, the impact of technology on developing brains, issues specific to adoption, and pre-verbal trauma. She is the mother of two children, an amateur baker, and the reigning Mario Kart champion in the Kawa home.

02/20/2026

Not all math struggles are about effort.
When number sense is persistently hard, it may be dyscalculia. 🔢🧠

Dyscalculia is a neurodevelopmental learning difference that impacts number sense, magnitude understanding, math fact retrieval, and procedural calculation despite appropriate instruction and average cognitive ability. Students may struggle with place value, estimation, time and money concepts, and multistep quantitative reasoning. Many rely on developmentally younger strategies such as finger counting well beyond expected stages.

This is not simply being “bad at math,” limited practice, or math anxiety alone. Dyscalculia reflects differences in core numerical processing that are unexpected relative to overall intellectual functioning. Without targeted, structured intervention, these challenges often persist and can contribute to secondary anxiety or academic avoidance. Since math is a cumulative science, the impact can ripple throughout the student’s education, also affecting performance in some sciences.

Neurodiversity affirming evaluation helps clarify strengths, identify specific learning needs, and guide evidence based support. Early understanding supports confidence, access, and long term academic well being. 🌱📚✨

02/18/2026

Dyslexia and ADHD frequently co-occur but are not the same. They can look similar in the classroom, but the “why” matters for effective intervention . 🧠📚

Dyslexia reflects differences in phonological processing that make word decoding less automatic. Reading may be slower or more effortful, spelling can remain phonetic or inconsistent, and listening comprehension is often stronger than reading output.

ADHD reflects differences in attention regulation and executive functioning. Reading errors often relate to focus shifts or impulsivity, and working memory fluctuations can affect comprehension and spelling.

Both dyslexia and ADHD can impact academic efficiency. Tasks may take longer, reading and writing can feel effortful, cognitive fatigue is common, and frustration may increase when environments do not match a student’s learning profile. Importantly, academic performance may not reflect true ability.

Neurodivergent learners benefit from specific, targeted interventions. Accurate identification helps align supports with how a student’s brain works best. ✨

02/16/2026

Not all reading delays are dyslexia.
Accurate differential diagnosis changes everything. 📚🧠

Reading challenges can stem from multiple underlying causes. While dyslexia involves core weaknesses in word-level decoding and spelling, other neurotypes can look similar on the surface.

Developmental Language Disorder can impact reading comprehension when oral language weaknesses drive difficulty understanding text despite intact decoding.
ADHD can contribute to inconsistent performance, inattention, and careless reading errors that mimic decoding problems.
Intellectual Disability presents with reading delays proportional to global cognitive functioning.
Anxiety or school avoidance can reduce reading engagement and performance.
Autism may involve primary comprehension or pragmatic language differences that affect how text is interpreted.

Differential diagnosis is imperative because accurate diagnosis drives effective, targeted intervention. When we understand the root cause, treatment becomes more precise and outcomes improve. 🎯

02/15/2026

Dyslexia rarely occurs in isolation.
If you are only treating reading, you may be missing the full picture. 🧠✨

Research suggests that 40 to 60 percent of individuals with dyslexia meet criteria for at least one additional neurodevelopmental diagnosis. The most common co occurring conditions are ADHD, Developmental Language Disorder, and dysgraphia.

ADHD is present in approximately 25 to 40 percent of cases and can intensify reading difficulties through executive functioning and sustained attention vulnerabilities. Developmental Language Disorder occurs in about 20 to 30 percent and is associated with broader expressive and receptive language weaknesses that affect reading comprehension and written expression. Dysgraphia, also seen in roughly 20 to 30 percent, contributes to impaired spelling, handwriting fluency, and written output efficiency.

Clarifying co occurring conditions is essential for accurate differential diagnosis and targeted intervention planning. Comprehensive neuropsychological evaluation helps ensure supports address the full cognitive and language profile rather than a single symptom cluster.

02/14/2026

Dyslexia impacts far more than reading fluency. 📚

Dyslexia is a neurodevelopmental learning difference that affects decoding, spelling, written expression, rapid naming, and processing efficiency. Students may read accurately but slowly, produce shorter or less organized written work, and show persistent phonetic or inconsistent spelling despite strong verbal reasoning.

Reading comprehension can appear weaker due to cognitive overload rather than true language deficits. Working memory for multistep directions, timed test performance, and math word problems can also be impacted because of language demands.

Over time, secondary effects such as anxiety, school avoidance, fatigue, and reduced academic confidence are common, especially in verbally bright students whose strengths mask underlying reading vulnerabilities.

Early identification supports targeted intervention, protects self esteem, and reduces long term academic and emotional risk. 🧠✨

02/12/2026

Bright dyslexic kids and adolescents sometimes fall through the cracks. Strong verbal skills can mask real literacy weaknesses.

In verbally adept older children and adolescents, dyslexia is often missed because vocabulary, reasoning, and verbal expression compensate for persistent reading and writing inefficiencies. These students may read accurately but slowly, fatigue with dense text, and struggle with reading fluency or timed tasks. Spelling is often disproportionately weak, with phonetic or inconsistent errors that do not resolve with practice.

Written expression may be shorter, less organized, or less sophisticated than verbal explanations. Word retrieval inefficiencies and reliance on memorization or context are common. You may hear, “I understand it when someone explains it.”

A key referral signal is a significant gap between verbal reasoning and literacy-based efficiency, especially when increasing academic demands are accompanied by anxiety, perfectionism, or school avoidance.

Early identification allows for targeted intervention, appropriate accommodations, and prevention of secondary emotional impacts.

02/10/2026

Early reading struggles are not a phase for many kids. 📚
These are early neurological signals worth paying attention to. 🧠✨

Early signs of dyslexia often include persistent difficulty connecting letters to sounds, trouble rhyming or breaking words into individual sounds, slow or effortful acquisition of phonics skills despite appropriate instruction, and avoidance of reading. Children may guess words based on pictures or the first letter, struggle to blend sounds, or have difficulty retaining sight words. Spelling is frequently more impaired than reading and may appear inconsistent or overly phonetic for age.

A wait-and-see approach can be harmful. When early dyslexia is missed, children often experience repeated academic failure, increased anxiety around reading, lowered confidence, and growing school avoidance. Delayed identification also means delayed access to evidence based reading intervention, which is most effective when started early.

Early clarity supports accurate intervention, protects self esteem, and helps families and schools respond before secondary emotional and academic impacts take hold. 💙

02/09/2026

Difficulty naming emotions is not the same as low emotional intensity.

Alexithymia is a trait marked by difficulty identifying, differentiating, and describing one’s own emotions, along with a more externally focused thinking style and confusion between emotional and physical states. It is estimated to occur in roughly 40 to 65 percent of autistic individuals, compared to about 10 percent of the general population. Alexithymia is not autism, but it commonly co occurs.

Differences in interoception, chronic sensory overload, masking, and repeated emotional invalidation can make emotional awareness feel less intuitive and more cognitively effortful, even when feelings are strong.

Consider referral when clients show persistent difficulty describing internal emotional states, mismatch between reported emotions and physiological arousal, or limited response to insight based or emotion labeling interventions despite adequate cognitive abilities. Comprehensive assessment can help clarify whether alexithymia, autism, trauma, or overlapping factors are contributing and guide more effective supports. LACIA regularly evaluates these nuanced presentations in children, teens, and adults.

02/05/2026

Autistic stims are not always obvious or stereotypical. Many show up as subtle, everyday behaviors that are often mislabeled as habits, quirks, or anxiety. Here are 8 stims people don’t usually recognize as stims, even though they serve the same regulation purpose 👇

1️⃣ Quiet fidgeting with objects
Twisting jewelry, rolling a ring on and off a finger, clicking a pen without realizing it, rubbing fabric seams. Because it’s subtle, it often flies under the radar.
2️⃣ Repetitive language use
Replaying phrases, movie quotes, or scripts in your head or out loud. This can also show up as repeating a word because it feels right, not because of its meaning.
3️⃣ Listening to the same song or sound on repeat
Playing one track, one scene, or one type of sound over and over because it’s regulating or grounding. This is auditory stimming, not being “stuck.”
4️⃣ Skin-focused behaviors
Picking at cuticles, rubbing skin, tracing scars, or repeatedly touching the same spot. Often misinterpreted as anxiety when it’s actually sensory regulation.
5️⃣ Posture or pressure-seeking habits
Sitting in unusual positions, crossing legs tightly, leaning heavily on furniture, pressing feet into the floor, or enjoying weighted pressure without realizing why.
6️⃣ Visual pattern scanning
Watching reflections, ceiling fans, shadows, scrolling patterns, or arranging items symmetrically because the visual input is calming.
7️⃣ Controlled micro-movements
Subtle toe wiggling inside shoes, jaw clenching and releasing, finger tapping under a desk. These are often suppressed versions of more obvious movement stims.
8️⃣ Mental stimming
Running through lists, replaying scenes, imagining repetitive motions, or mentally organizing information in the same sequence over and over. It’s internal, but still regulatory.

When a behavior is repetitive and helps regulate sensory input, emotion, or attention, it may be a stim even if it does not look like one.

02/03/2026

Autism and ADHD are often confused, frequently co-occurring, and not interchangeable.

This Venn diagram highlights patterns that are more specific to autism, more specific to ADHD, and commonly shared across both. Understanding how these profiles overlap and diverge can clarify differential diagnosis and reduce mislabeling.

🔍 Autism tends to involve differences in social communication, need for predictability, bottom up processing, monotropic attention, sensory driven shutdowns or meltdowns, and delayed emotional processing.
⚡ ADHD is more often characterized by difficulty regulating attention, interest based motivation, differences in time perception, task initiation challenges, impulsivity, and inconsistent performance across contexts.
🧩 Both commonly include executive functioning challenges, emotional regulation difficulties, sensory differences, masking, burnout risk, and anxiety related to chronic overwhelm.

💾 Save for referral considerations
🧠 Helpful when thinking about differential diagnosis
📌 Worth revisiting during treatment planning

➡️ Consider referral for comprehensive evaluation when attention, behavior, or social concerns feel complex, inconsistent, or insufficiently explained by a single framework, or when accommodations and interventions are not producing expected gains.

At LACIA, we specialize in nuanced, neurodiversity affirming assessment that helps teams move from confusion to clarity.

02/02/2026

When families hesitate, language matters. Thoughtful framing can reduce fear, clarify intent, and keep the focus on understanding rather than labeling.

Comprehensive assessment is not about jumping to diagnoses or medication. It is about clarifying why a child or teen is struggling, so interventions can be better targeted across home, school, and therapy settings.

Testing is especially helpful when
• symptoms are complex or overlapping
• progress has plateaued despite appropriate intervention
• attention, learning, emotional regulation, or executive functioning concerns co-occur
• diagnostic clarity would change treatment planning or school supports

LACIA specializes in thoughtful, neurodiversity affirming evaluations that support collaborative care and clearer next steps for families and providers.

01/30/2026

Attention concerns are a signal, not a diagnosis.🧭

Attention and concentration difficulties are transdiagnostic. They can reflect ADHD, anxiety, depression, learning differences, and processing differences, or a combination of factors. Observable inattention does not clarify etiology on its own and should prompt careful differential diagnosis rather than assumption.

Comprehensive assessment helps clarify why attention is breaking down and identifies the cognitive, emotional, and learning profiles driving symptoms. This allows for targeted recommendations, appropriate referrals, and more effective intervention planning.

💡Clear signals to refer for testing include:
• Attention concerns with inconsistent or unclear presentation
• Limited response to first-line interventions
• Co-occurring academic, emotional, or behavioral concerns
• Diagnostic uncertainty impacting treatment decisions

LACIA provides comprehensive, neuroaffirming assessment to support diagnostic clarity and practical next steps for families and care teams.

Address

2566 Overland Avenue Ste. 645
Los Angeles, CA
90064

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm

Telephone

+14243176878

Website

http://www.LA-CIA.org/

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