### The Theoretical Foundations and Content of Alif-Ya  
Human intelligence has been defined in several ways. Some of these definitions highlight analytical skills to solve problems; others emphasize social skills and holistic algorithms to perform adaptively in daily life, yet others incorporate executive functions as basic processes of intellectual ability [38]. In the field of education, intelligence assessment has a long tradition in which, from Binet-Simon through Weschler, intelligence quotient scores (IQ) have been generated as a composite score of several sub-tests sharing similar underlying cognitive processes [39; 40] as the psychometric analyses have been shown repeatedly [41; 42; 43]. These scores have been used to make important educational decisions, such as school placement or specific curriculum accommodations [44]. However, IQ scores have been criticized as not reflective of a child's actual range of cognitive skills. That is, intelligence tests have not always captured the relevant broad spectrum of skills that characterize future performance accurately [45]. Alif-Ya addresses this issue in part by providing a uniquely broad coverage of cognitive processes, various combinations of which can be assembled to produce overall and modality-specific (e.g., verbal and non-verbal) IQ scores. It is anchored in the theoretical psychometric foundations of the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) model of intelligence, long recognized as one of the most empirically validated structural models of human cognitive abilities [41; 42; 43]. Alif-Ya is also founded upon the clinically derived theories of [PERSON] [46] encompassed in the Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, Sequential (PASS) theory of intelligence [47]. To encompass the abilities emphasized by both of these theories, Alif-Ya consists of 47 subtests that cover elements of memory (Short-term, Working, Learning, Retrieval), executive control (Attention, Meta-awareness), and reasoning (Fluid, Verbal, Quantitative, Visual, Sociocultural). The content and presentation of each subset of Alif-Ya was designed to be culturally and linguistically appropriate, reflective of the distinctive features of the Arabic language and its dialects, and of the demographic and geographical variability in the KSA and other Gulf countries. All content was developed collaboratively by the US-based and Saudi Arabian teams of researchers; all subtest visuals were created by artists. Figure 1 maps all of Alif-Ya's assessments and the broad cognitive indices they are designed to evaluate. Alif-Ya is designed for the assessment of individuals aged 5-18. Although its primary intended purpose is to generate an overall IQ score, it is multidimensional and provides information about a number of neuropsychological domains that may contribute to the identification of giftedness and intellectual disability, and provides indicators of autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit disorder, language impairment, and impaired brain functioning (e.g., traumatic brain injury, epilepsy). Thus, Alif-Ya can give clinicians a broad  
Figure 1: Alif-Ya’s subtests and their contributions to the assessment of memory, executive control, and reasoning. perspective for the interpretation of an individual's abilities by calculating a wide range of various indices of cognitive functioning. The battery includes a number of subtests for constructs that have only relatively recently been recognized as importantly contributing to academic and/or general intellectual functioning.