Intellectual impairments in preschoolers have been widely studied. A regularity
that emerges is that children’s intellectual impairments have an important
impact on later adjustments in life. However, few studies have looked at the
intellectual profiles of young psychiatric outpatients. This study aimed to
describe the intelligence profile of preschoolers referred to psychiatry for
various cognitive and behavioral problems in terms of verbal, nonverbal, and
full-scale IQ and to examine their association with diagnoses. Three hundred
four clinical records from young children aged under 7 years and 3 months who
consulted at an outpatient psychiatric clinic and who had one intellectual
assessment with a Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence were
reviewed. Verbal IQ (VIQ), Nonverbal IQ (NVIQ), and Full-scale IQ (FSIQ) were
extracted. Hierarchical cluster analysis using Ward’s method was employed to
organize data into groups. The children had, on average, a FSIQ of 81, which is
significantly lower than that expected in the general population. Four clusters
were identified by the hierarchical clusters analysis. Three were characterized
by low, average, and high intellectual ability. The last cluster was
characterized by a verbal deficit. Findings also revealed that children’s
diagnoses were not related to any specific cluster, except for children with an
intellectual disability with, as expected, low abilities. Children referred to
an intellectual assessment in an early childhood mental health clinic showed an
altered intellectual development, more specifically in the verbal domain.