The VPA™: Assessment & Clinical Reasoning: facilitator notes

Presenter cues

• Basal and ceiling in plain language: basal is the highest clean level; ceiling is where it breaks and stays broken.
• No adaptive skipping — every skill runs L1 → L5 in order. Say why: the shape of the ladder is the finding.
• Teach the fatigue rule before the validity slide, so participants hear the pacing advice as protection of their own data.

Answer key

Performance dips at L3, recovers at L4. Where is the ceiling?

There is no ceiling at L3 — a ceiling requires breakdown that persists. Record the L3 dip as an observation, continue the ladder, and re-probe L3 later in the session or on another day. A single-level dip with recovery usually means attention, item familiarity, or a momentary state change.

You are two skills from the end and the student is visibly fatigued. What do you do?

Stop and split the battery across two sessions, documenting the break point and conditions. Pushing through yields a low profile you cannot distinguish from a real deficit, and re-testing later will not un-do the record.

Watch-outs

• Ordering all fatigue-sensitive probes last, then interpreting the resulting decline as endurance deficit.