Clinical neuropsychology studies the relations between the brain and behaviour. It makes use of modern diagnostic tools such as interviews (1), personality questionnaires (2), complaint lists (3), neuropsychological tests (4) and neuroimaging research (5). The most important tool is knowledge of different cognitive and emotional domains.
Localization refers to the theory that focuses on the specific behavioural effects of selective disorders on specific parts of the brain (i.e. a specific disorder is localized in a specific area in the brain). Holism focuses on the general behavioural effect of the brain as a whole.
There are several requirements for the intake interview:
The organization’s attitude towards the client must be respectful. The interviewer must dress appropriately. The interviewer must keep an appropriate emotional and physical distance from the client. Age influences the topics that are discussed during the intake interview.
Advantages of structured interviews are better and higher reliability (1), a fairer estimation of the severity of complaints (2), a greater comprehensiveness (3) and a reduction in both information variance and criterion variance (4). Disadvantages of structured interviews are that they are time-consuming (1), the interviewers need to be regularly trained (2) and the interviewer may conduct the interview too routinely (3). There are several structured interview instruments:
There are several potential obstacles during the interview:
The referrer question is not always the same as the general practitioner question. The diagnostic cycle within clinical neuropsychology takes several steps:
The basic questions of the diagnostic process are recognition (1), explanation (2), prediction (3), indication (4) and evaluation (5). There are three categories of questions in clinical neuropsychology:
It is important to know what the relevance for the patient is of these questions. The test-retest reliability is important in neuropsychological tests because sometimes tests need to be made in a short span of each other to indicate improvement after treatment or surgery.
There are several groups of neuropsychological tests:
The behaviour and behavioural limitations in daily life can be explained on the basis of a cognitive profile. Information processing speed may impact the test profile without it saying anything about the underlying specific functional domains. Therefore, it is necessary to assess this. Intelligence tests should not be used as a screener for possible disorders in cognitive disorders.
There are several problems with interpretation of neuropsychological tests:
File study refers to reviewing the file for the history of the patient. There are several benefits to this:
Medical records may be essential to establish differential diagnosis. When studying a file, it is important to know what any unknown terms mean (1), whether medication use is associated with specific cognitive complaints (2) and whether relevant research has been conducted previously.
The anamnesis is the medical history of the patient told by the patient himself. This patient is never objective and prone to be influenced by external factors (e.g. personality). The structure of an anamnesis consists of:
During the anamnesis, there is a chance to observe the patient. There are several reasons for the importance of observation:
There are several things that are included in the observation:
The neuropsychological exam is the operationalization of testing the hypotheses. Anamnesis alone is not enough to test a hypothesis. One test is also not sufficient because tests only measure parts of a function (1), it measures multiple cognitive processes at the same time (i.e. they do not measure one thing) (2), multiple tests are needed for falsification and verification of the results (3) and tests are needed for alternative explanations of the observed behaviour.
The test selection depends on the referral question (1), the hypotheses (2), the information from previous research (3), the professional literature (4), reliability of a test (5), validity of a test (6), availability of a test (7), the available time (8) and specific handicaps of the client (9).
Test results need to be corrected for age (1), education (2), premorbid IQ (3) and sex (4). Pattern analysis refers to checking whether the pattern of findings fit a specific disorder. This consists of several steps:
The combination of different strengths and weaknesses is essential for many diagnoses. Deviating scores may indicate pathology. Observation can be used to see if other factors may explain the score (e.g. not paying attention). It is also important to look for a consistency or pattern in findings. A combination of quantitative and qualitative interpretation is necessary for diagnostics. The interpretation should be placed in the context of the question and the information from the anamnesis.
It is also important to take possible interference factors into account as this could influence the validity of the results (e.g. psychiatric problems; emotional factors; cultural background; peripheral disorder; use of medication; fatigue; pain).
Potential pitfalls of interpretation are considering a symptom as evidence of the cause (1), thinking that a particular test has a fixed meaning (2), thinking that subjective data provides a reliable impression of function disorders (3) and forgetting that dissociations also emerge in healthy individuals (4).
The psychological report is the end product of the diagnostic cycle. It must be clearly formulated (1), tailored to the reader (2), answer the asked questions (3), has a clear focus and no unnecessary information (4) and it is characteristic of the client (i.e. particularly about the client) (5).
A neuropsychological report consists of the client data (1), information on the psychologist (2), information on the initiator and the initiator’s questions (3), anamneses (4), observation (5), the test results sorted by cognitive domain (6), a conclusion (7), advice (8) and the period of validity for the report and test data (9).
The certainty of the interpretation depends on the validity of the method. There are several common mistakes in a diagnostic report:
The client is entitled to feedback. Furthermore, the feedback can have a therapeutic effect. The feedback must include information about the diagnosis (1), must fit the diagnostic cycle (2) and there must be an agreement on recommendation (3).
There are some general points for the oral report:
There are several steps of a bad news interview:
It is important to check whether the client understands the message. This can be checked by asking the client to repeat the message. The caregiver may dread bad news interviews because it elicits strong emotions which confronts the caregiver with his own powerlessness (1), the well-being of seriously ill clients is contingent on how bad news is delivered (2), the caregiver may not agree with the message (3) and the caregiver may be confronted with complaints of the client (4).
There are several ethical guidelines:
The patient has several rights that are relevant to the psychological report:
Non-external initiators do not have direct contact with the client in a personal manner. There are three ways in which a report can be structured:
A comprehensive psychological examination consists of client data (1), information on the psychologist and other persons involved (2), initiator and initiator request (3), client consultation (4), definitive hypotheses (5), diagnostic methods used (6), interview details (7), observational data (8), explanation of the test results (9), summary of main results (10), conclusions of hypotheses (11) and the period of validity for the report and the test data (12).
Psychological Assessment – Lecture 1, interim exam 2 summary [UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM]Risk assessment is important in the social (1), political (2), clinical (3) and ethical (4) domain. It has several goals:
The risk depends on the situation and the risk assessment is never certain. The quality of risk assessment depends on the available information regarding the individual (1), the instrument that is used (2) and the professional (3).
Risk assessment refers to assessing the risk of future violent or non-violent behaviour. It estimates the likelihood that someone will exhibit a certain behaviour (e.g. violence) in the near or distant future. The purpose is to increase the ability to detect true positive and true negative cases and keep the false positives and false negatives to a minimum. The base rate refers to the prior probabilities in an outcome domain (e.g. recidivism rate in sex offenders).
Risk assessment can be used to gain insight into heterogeneous groups of offenders through gaining information regarding risk factors that are related to recidivism. Denial of the crime and the severity of the crime is not predictive of sexual recidivism. Impulsive, anti-social tendencies and sexual deviance and preoccupation are predictive of sexual recidivism.
The structured professional approach uses systematic collection (1), reviewing (2), combining (3), weighing (4) and integrating (5) information on risk factors. Treatment aimed at reducing violent recidivism should focus on reducing risk factors and reinforcing protective factors.
There are several approaches to risk assessment:
In the structured clinical judgement method, only the presence of a risk factor matters. The absence of a risk factor
.....read more Psychological Assessment – Lecture 2, interim exam 2 summary [UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM].The goal of culture-sensitive working in mental health care is reducing major health inequalities. People with little education generally have poorer health. In health care, there is equality but not equity. Personal cultural-sensitive care can provide equity.
Every culture looks at mental health problems from a certain way of thinking and acting. Every culture has its own symptom pool. This influences people’s interpretation of mental illness (1), the expression of distress (2), the help-seeking attitudes (3) and prevention (4).
The explanatory models of mental illness differ per culture. It is important to know the explanatory model of the patient as discordance between client and counsellor can lead to disruption of the therapeutic relationship (1), poor communication (2) and poor therapy compliance (3). Health care workers have expectations of clients an people with a migration background cannot always live up to these expectations.
Non-Dutch parents make less use of mental health care services compared to Dutch parents. They experience less need for help and are worse at problem recognition. Moroccan adolescents are worse at problem recognition than Dutch adolescents. The differences in reported mental health use are mediated by emotional problem identification. It is possible that there are differences in emotional problem identification because it of cultural differences in what is normal and abnormal.
The therapist should investigate the ideas of the client about the cause, meaning and solution of the problems (1), should communicate the therapist’s vision (2) and should communicate the potential benefits of therapy (3).
Culture refers to the set of lifestyles that certain groups of people develop and share over a long historical period. Most cultural differences are not immediately visible. Culture is taught during upbringing. However, people are mostly not aware of the cultural values. This causes that cultural differences often lead to misunderstandings. Culture partially determines how complaints and illnesses are explained and presented. A high context culture makes use of indirect communication. A low context culture makes use of direct communication.
There are several cultural competences that are important for a therapist:
A good method of checking whether a message has been successfully transferred is the teach-back method which asks the client to repeat the message in the client’s own words. There are several phases in the life of a refugee:
Psychological Assessment – Lecture 3 / 4, interim exam 2 summary [UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM].Clinical neuropsychology studies the relations between the brain and behaviour. It makes use of modern diagnostic tools such as interviews (1), personality questionnaires (2), complaint lists (3), neuropsychological tests (4) and neuroimaging research (5). The most important tool is knowledge of different cognitive and emotional domains.
Localization refers to the theory that focuses on the specific behavioural effects of selective disorders on specific parts of the brain (i.e. a specific disorder is localized in a specific area in the brain). Holism focuses on the general behavioural effect of the brain as a whole.
There are several requirements for the intake interview:
The organization’s attitude towards the client must be respectful. The interviewer must dress appropriately. The interviewer must keep an appropriate emotional and physical distance from the client. Age influences the topics that are discussed during the intake interview.
Advantages of structured interviews are better and higher reliability (1), a fairer estimation of the severity of complaints (2), a greater comprehensiveness (3) and a reduction in both information variance and criterion variance (4). Disadvantages of structured interviews are that they are time-consuming (1), the interviewers need to be regularly trained (2) and the interviewer may conduct the interview too routinely (3). There are several structured interview instruments:
There are several potential obstacles during the interview:
The referrer question is not always the same as the general practitioner question.
.....read more Psychological Assessment – Lecture 5, interim exam 2 summary [UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM].There are a lot of similarities between developmental disorders (e.g. DSD, autism). Neurodevelopmental disorders have a proven biological basis (e.g. ADHD) and behaviour and emotion disorders do not have a proven biological basis and it is likely that the environment is more important for these disorders.
It is important to assess how complaints could develop for the child, the parents and their parenting. This is the construct-centred approach. This focuses on the factors that have to do with the problem behaviour.
A difficulty learning can lead to difficulties in school and this can lead to plenty of problems in childhood. There are several practical problems when interviewing children:
There are several reasons to still interview the child despite the practical problems:
It is important to use multiple informants when working with children. This is important because:
The child behaviour checklist (CBCL) checks internalizing (1), externalising (2) and other problems and symptoms. The diagnosis cannot be based on the screener of these types of symptoms. There are different explanations for the differences between informants:
Observation refers to perceiving for the purpose of drawing conclusions. However, this is made difficult because of selectivity (1), subjectivity (2), absence of base rate and norms (3) and (in)stability of perception (4).
The systematic / standardized approach reduces these problems by logging the what, when and where of the perceptions. The content of observation requires choosing the observation unit. Molecular observation refers to a very specific observation which is not very meaningful but objective and highly reliable. A molar observation refers to a general observation which is meaningful but less objective and less reliable. Professional observation refers to goal-oriented observation on the basis of an observation question which
.....read more Psychological Assessment – Lecture 6, interim exam 2 summary [UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM]. Therapeutic assessment refers to personality assessment that aims to have direct therapeutic influence on patients. In therapeutic assessment, the client develops highly personalized questions together with the therapist.
The holistic theory focuses on what is known and what is not yet known. It also focuses on what is understood and what is not yet understood. It pays attention to inconsistencies and recurring themes.
Self-report cannot always be used because some people have introspective limitations (1), are ambivalent about changing (2) or may want to present themselves in a particular manner (3). This makes the multi-method approach useful.
The MMPI-2 measures psychiatric symptoms (1), personality (2) and test attitude (3).It measures what friends can see and may report about the person. The Rorschach measures the level of personality organization (1), level of object relations (2), the capacity and style of affect management (3), the cognitive and affective style (4), the accuracy of perception (5) and self-perception (6). It measures what is ‘under the surface’.
Incremental validity refers to extra knowledge coming from additional instruments.
A treatment plan should be based on the best science available. The clinical hermeneutics error refers to the therapist losing track of the actual degree of pathology due to adopting the patient’s perspective. High-level depth of processing or interpreting and explaining the behaviour leads to a loss of normative judgement.
The Neo-Kraepelinian diagnostic rubrics consist of ascertainment of facts to determine the presence or absence of relatively explicit diagnostic criteria (1), the making of differential and multi-axis diagnoses (2) and the differential selection of treatment guided by differential diagnosis (3).
A high degree of comorbidity may be the result of manifestations of the same few maladaptive personality traits (e.g. negative emotionality) which are interpreted as symptoms. The features a diagnostician focuses on may be consequences of extreme levels of personality traits (1), problematic configurations of trait levels (2) or extreme adaptations to personality traits (3).
Personality traits influence how individuals interpret and construe life events. Trait levels refer to an individual’s specific dispositions. There are three trait dimensions:
Treatment planners should know about four things:
Individuals with certain genotypes select environment that provides stability for their personality
.....read more Psychological Assessment – Lecture 1, interim exam 1 summary [UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM]. 
Psychological assessment refers to the collection and integration of psychological data to make a diagnosis in the field of psychology. This employs tools such as tests, interviews, observation and specifically designed equipment.
Physiognomy states that it is possible to judge the inner character of people from their appearance (e.g. face). Phrenology states that the bumps on the skull are an indicator of personality.
A single aptitude test measures one ability domain and a multiple-aptitude test measures several distinct ability domains. The development of aptitude tests lagged behind the development of intelligence tests because of a lack of statistical techniques (1) and the absence of practical application of these tests (2).
Ipsative tests compare the relative strength of interests within an individual instead of comparing it to professional groups (e.g. interest inventories). There is a world-wide trend of evidence-based testing; the idea that treatments and interventions require proof that they are effective.
In the first world war, there was group testing of intelligence on recruits. This was not very successful because of the large number of recruits (1), the difficulty comparing verbal and non-verbal tests (2) and the lack of validation of the test (3).
The Bernreuter personality inventory was one of the first personality tests. The Rorschach test was developed to reveal the inner workings of an abnormal subject. The Thematic Apperception Test was developed as an instrument to study normal personality.
Projective testing made use of free association (1), sentence completion (2), and interpretation (3).
Person | Relevance |
Wundt | He measured the speed of thought of individuals. |
Galton | He demonstrated that individual differences exist and are objectively measurable. |
Wissler | He attempted to validate measurements and demonstrated that reaction time and sensory discrimination (i.e. copper era) were flawed as measurements for intelligence. |
Thomasius | He was the first to use rating scales and systematically collect and analyse quantitative data. |
Psychological Assessment – Lecture 2, interim exam 1 summary [UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM]. An intake is a clinical interview with a referred client who requests help with certain complaints to find out the client’s presenting problem and to get acquainted with the client. This allows for the building of a working relationship and is an important source for hypothesis building.
The intake categorizes the information about the client:
The predisposing- (1), explanatory- (2), perpetuating- (3) and protective factors (4) need to be taken into account when assessing the complaints and the impaired functioning.
Recognizing patterns in behaviour and complaints in order to apply a classification system is called a classifying diagnosis. Cause-effect relationships and seeing a diagnosis as an individual theory is a descriptive diagnosis.
The presenting problem refers to determining in what way a client’s functioning is impaired. This includes whatever complaint the individual identifies as the reason for assessment. The symptomatic evaluation refers to the symptomatic and medical features of what may be impairing the client’s functioning.
Behavioural observations are added to the intake’s observations because self-report is limited (1), it adds information on complaints and personality (2), double-checks the information given by the client (3) and not observing deviations is informative too.
The mental status evaluation refers to a method of organizing clinical observations data.
Receptive language refers to language comprehension. Expressive language refers to the individual’s use of language. Mood refers to the current emotional state of an individual as reported by the individual. Affect refers to the observed emotional state of an individual. Mood can be incongruent with the situation and with the affect.
Hypotheses should be generated for all likely causes of impairments. One hypothesis always states that the individual’s functioning is normative and functional. This requires all impairments in functioning to be mapped. Impairment in functioning due to medical illness or substance-related disorders need to be ruled out.
There are several additional biases of an intake:
Psychological Assessment – Lecture 3, interim exam 1 summary [UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM].Personality refers to a unique combination of psychological characteristics (e.g. cognitions, feelings, behaviours) that are relatively stable over time. A personality trait refers to any distinguishable, relatively enduring way in which one individual varies from another.
There are different trait theories and the different theories have different ideas of how many traits exist. The traits are relatively stable over time. However, the expression of a trait in behaviour can vary. The situation is important for the expression of a trait. Behaviour is trait and content-dependent (e.g. talking during a lecture is rude but talking at a café is friendly).
A personality state is a situation-specific, temporary disposition. A personality type is a constellation of personality traits. However, employing personality types might be a simplification of personality. A type-A personality is characterized by competitiveness (1), haste (2), restlessness (3), impatience (4), feelings of being time-pressured (5) and strong needs for achievement (6). A type B personality is characterized by the opposite of type A personality.
A personality profile refers to a narrative description, graph, table or other representation of the extent to which a person has demonstrated certain targeted characteristics (i.e. personality traits) as a result of the administration or application of tools of assessment.
The choice of assessment instruments depends on validity and reliability. In addition to that, it depends on the context and the research question.
High reliability is a condition for high validity. Norms of tests can be based on relative norm scores (i.e. how does one score compared to others) (1), relevance (2), representativeness (3), size (4) and actuality (5).
There are several types of instruments for assessing personality:
Projective testsThe scoring of projective tests is complex and is used for the recognition phase of the diagnostic process. Positive aspects of projective tests are that they are less reliant on reading skills (1), implicit processes (2), self-insight (3) and there is less faking (4). Negative aspects of projective
.....read more Psychological Assessment – Lecture 4, interim exam 1 summary [UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM]. General intelligence (g) explains a person’s performance on intellectual tests according to Spearman. However, the idea that there is only one factor explaining intelligence is contested. Crystallized intelligence refers to the knowledge of facts. Fluid intelligence refers to the ability to solve new problems and reason.
Fluid intelligence is not stable over time and is disrupted by several factors (e.g. brain damage, age). Crystallized intelligence is relatively stable over time.
The general intelligence test is a method of assessing someone’s intelligence and consists of several sub-tests which assess specific intellectual skills. IQ reflects a person’s overall performance on all subtests in comparison with a group of peers.
There are several forms of the Raven’s Progressive Matrices, including the Standard Progressive Matrices (1), the Coloured Progressive Matrices (2) and the Advanced Standard Progressive Matrices (3).
A lot of consequences (e.g. special education or not) depend on the results of IQ test scores and these consequences treat IQ test scores as absolute numbers. One problem with a classification system is that intelligence tests often do not properly differentiate between participants on the extreme scale of the measure. The Flynn effect also needs to be taken into account when interpreting intelligence tests.
Intellectual tests can provide powerful diagnostic information. However, intelligence tests are not useful for a localized disorder or localized brain damage. There are three levels in intelligence tests in neuropsychological questions:
The test administrator needs to communicate clearly (1), be sensitive to the client’s feelings and perceptions (2) and make sure the logistics are in order (3) at the day of the test.
Norm data provides support for making good quality decisions (e.g. generating the cut-off scores for personnel selection). It is imperative to select norm groups with which to compare the client’s raw scores. The accuracy of conclusions depends on the reliability of the test. It is necessary to standardize scores to compare scores of two different constructs (e.g. verbal intelligence and motor skills).
People with lower intelligence have a higher risk of complaints. However, mental health care is aimed at people with average intelligence. It is useful to conduct an intelligence test on everyone but this is expensive so it is more useful to use an intelligence screening. The Screener for Intelligence and Learning Disabilities (SCIL) consists of 14 items aimed at
.....read more Psychological Assessment – Lecture 5, interim exam 1 summary [UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM].Psychological assessment is used for selection of personnel (1), development of personnel (2), career choice (3), absence and reintegration of personnel (4), assessing motivation (5), assessing leadership (6) and improving performance (7).
Personal interest is related to occupational fulfilment and success. They promote better performance (1), greater productivity (2) and greater job satisfaction (3). It can be assessed using an interest measure (e.g. Strong Interest Inventory). Interest is less predictive of job performance and work outcomes than personality traits. A combination of test instruments increases the predictive validity for work outcomes.
Holland’s theory of vocational personality types states that there are six personality types and vocational choice reflects one of these personality types. Hunter states that there are five families of jobs; setting up (1), feeding and off-bearing (2), synthesising and coordinating (3), analysing, compiling and computing (4) and copying and comparing (5). The interest inventories could recommend a family of jobs to a person.
High school aptitude predicts job performance and not job satisfaction. Both are not predicted by interest inventories. A portfolio assessment refers to the evaluation of an individual’s work sample to make a decision regarding this individual (e.g. placement). The advantages of portfolio assessment are evaluating many work samples by the assessee (1), obtaining understanding of the assessee’s work-related thoughts and habits (2) and question the assessee further regarding aspects of the thought-processes (3).
An integrity test refers to a narrowly defined personality test to predict an employee’s integrity (e.g. theft). Overt integrity tests are asking straight-forward questions regarding integrity. Tests like these are characterized as criterion-focused occupational personality scales.
Screening refers to the superficial process of evaluation based on minimal standards. Selection refers to a process whereby each person evaluated for a position will be either accepted or rejected. Classification refers to categorization with respect to two or more criteria. Placement refers to a disposition, transfer or assignment to a group or category that may be made based on one criterion.
Cognitive performance, personality and motivation are predictors of work performance. However, cognitive performance tests are controversial because they may be biased towards a group. The personality and cognitive performance of a candidate can be assessed using a situational performance test. Motivation can be assessed using work preferences inventory or an interview.
There are differences in a person’s motivation to accept a job and to retain the job. These differences might be explained by the expectancy of outcomes through their efforts (e.g. efficacy).
Intrinsic motivation refers to having an internal driving force for motivation and effort. This consists of subfactors that concern the challenge of work tasks. Extrinsic motivation refers to having an external driving force for motivation and effort (e.g. money). This consists of subfactors that concern the compensation for work (1) and external influences (e.g. recognition) (2).
People can have controlled or autonomous motivation and the more autonomous motivation, the higher job performance
.....read more Psychological Assessment – Lecture 1, interim exam 2 summary [UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM]Risk assessment is important in the social (1), political (2), clinical (3) and ethical (4) domain. It has several goals:
The risk depends on the situation and the risk assessment is never certain. The quality of risk assessment depends on the available information regarding the individual (1), the instrument that is used (2) and the professional (3).
Risk assessment refers to assessing the risk of future violent or non-violent behaviour. It estimates the likelihood that someone will exhibit a certain behaviour (e.g. violence) in the near or distant future. The purpose is to increase the ability to detect true positive and true negative cases and keep the false positives and false negatives to a minimum. The base rate refers to the prior probabilities in an outcome domain (e.g. recidivism rate in sex offenders).
Risk assessment can be used to gain insight into heterogeneous groups of offenders through gaining information regarding risk factors that are related to recidivism. Denial of the crime and the severity of the crime is not predictive of sexual recidivism. Impulsive, anti-social tendencies and sexual deviance and preoccupation are predictive of sexual recidivism.
The structured professional approach uses systematic collection (1), reviewing (2), combining (3), weighing (4) and integrating (5) information on risk factors. Treatment aimed at reducing violent recidivism should focus on reducing risk factors and reinforcing protective factors.
There are several approaches to risk assessment:
In the structured clinical judgement method, only the presence of a risk factor matters. The absence of a risk factor
.....read more Psychological Assessment – Lecture 2, interim exam 2 summary [UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM].The goal of culture-sensitive working in mental health care is reducing major health inequalities. People with little education generally have poorer health. In health care, there is equality but not equity. Personal cultural-sensitive care can provide equity.
Every culture looks at mental health problems from a certain way of thinking and acting. Every culture has its own symptom pool. This influences people’s interpretation of mental illness (1), the expression of distress (2), the help-seeking attitudes (3) and prevention (4).
The explanatory models of mental illness differ per culture. It is important to know the explanatory model of the patient as discordance between client and counsellor can lead to disruption of the therapeutic relationship (1), poor communication (2) and poor therapy compliance (3). Health care workers have expectations of clients an people with a migration background cannot always live up to these expectations.
Non-Dutch parents make less use of mental health care services compared to Dutch parents. They experience less need for help and are worse at problem recognition. Moroccan adolescents are worse at problem recognition than Dutch adolescents. The differences in reported mental health use are mediated by emotional problem identification. It is possible that there are differences in emotional problem identification because it of cultural differences in what is normal and abnormal.
The therapist should investigate the ideas of the client about the cause, meaning and solution of the problems (1), should communicate the therapist’s vision (2) and should communicate the potential benefits of therapy (3).
Culture refers to the set of lifestyles that certain groups of people develop and share over a long historical period. Most cultural differences are not immediately visible. Culture is taught during upbringing. However, people are mostly not aware of the cultural values. This causes that cultural differences often lead to misunderstandings. Culture partially determines how complaints and illnesses are explained and presented. A high context culture makes use of indirect communication. A low context culture makes use of direct communication.
There are several cultural competences that are important for a therapist:
A good method of checking whether a message has been successfully transferred is the teach-back method which asks the client to repeat the message in the client’s own words. There are several phases in the life of a refugee:
Psychological Assessment – Lecture 3 / 4, interim exam 2 summary [UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM].Clinical neuropsychology studies the relations between the brain and behaviour. It makes use of modern diagnostic tools such as interviews (1), personality questionnaires (2), complaint lists (3), neuropsychological tests (4) and neuroimaging research (5). The most important tool is knowledge of different cognitive and emotional domains.
Localization refers to the theory that focuses on the specific behavioural effects of selective disorders on specific parts of the brain (i.e. a specific disorder is localized in a specific area in the brain). Holism focuses on the general behavioural effect of the brain as a whole.
There are several requirements for the intake interview:
The organization’s attitude towards the client must be respectful. The interviewer must dress appropriately. The interviewer must keep an appropriate emotional and physical distance from the client. Age influences the topics that are discussed during the intake interview.
Advantages of structured interviews are better and higher reliability (1), a fairer estimation of the severity of complaints (2), a greater comprehensiveness (3) and a reduction in both information variance and criterion variance (4). Disadvantages of structured interviews are that they are time-consuming (1), the interviewers need to be regularly trained (2) and the interviewer may conduct the interview too routinely (3). There are several structured interview instruments:
There are several potential obstacles during the interview:
The referrer question is not always the same as the general practitioner question.
.....read more Psychological Assessment – Lecture 5, interim exam 2 summary [UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM].There are a lot of similarities between developmental disorders (e.g. DSD, autism). Neurodevelopmental disorders have a proven biological basis (e.g. ADHD) and behaviour and emotion disorders do not have a proven biological basis and it is likely that the environment is more important for these disorders.
It is important to assess how complaints could develop for the child, the parents and their parenting. This is the construct-centred approach. This focuses on the factors that have to do with the problem behaviour.
A difficulty learning can lead to difficulties in school and this can lead to plenty of problems in childhood. There are several practical problems when interviewing children:
There are several reasons to still interview the child despite the practical problems:
It is important to use multiple informants when working with children. This is important because:
The child behaviour checklist (CBCL) checks internalizing (1), externalising (2) and other problems and symptoms. The diagnosis cannot be based on the screener of these types of symptoms. There are different explanations for the differences between informants:
Observation refers to perceiving for the purpose of drawing conclusions. However, this is made difficult because of selectivity (1), subjectivity (2), absence of base rate and norms (3) and (in)stability of perception (4).
The systematic / standardized approach reduces these problems by logging the what, when and where of the perceptions. The content of observation requires choosing the observation unit. Molecular observation refers to a very specific observation which is not very meaningful but objective and highly reliable. A molar observation refers to a general observation which is meaningful but less objective and less reliable. Professional observation refers to goal-oriented observation on the basis of an observation question which
.....read more Psychological Assessment – Lecture 6, interim exam 2 summary [UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM]. Therapeutic assessment refers to personality assessment that aims to have direct therapeutic influence on patients. In therapeutic assessment, the client develops highly personalized questions together with the therapist.
The holistic theory focuses on what is known and what is not yet known. It also focuses on what is understood and what is not yet understood. It pays attention to inconsistencies and recurring themes.
Self-report cannot always be used because some people have introspective limitations (1), are ambivalent about changing (2) or may want to present themselves in a particular manner (3). This makes the multi-method approach useful.
The MMPI-2 measures psychiatric symptoms (1), personality (2) and test attitude (3).It measures what friends can see and may report about the person. The Rorschach measures the level of personality organization (1), level of object relations (2), the capacity and style of affect management (3), the cognitive and affective style (4), the accuracy of perception (5) and self-perception (6). It measures what is ‘under the surface’.
Incremental validity refers to extra knowledge coming from additional instruments.
A treatment plan should be based on the best science available. The clinical hermeneutics error refers to the therapist losing track of the actual degree of pathology due to adopting the patient’s perspective. High-level depth of processing or interpreting and explaining the behaviour leads to a loss of normative judgement.
The Neo-Kraepelinian diagnostic rubrics consist of ascertainment of facts to determine the presence or absence of relatively explicit diagnostic criteria (1), the making of differential and multi-axis diagnoses (2) and the differential selection of treatment guided by differential diagnosis (3).
A high degree of comorbidity may be the result of manifestations of the same few maladaptive personality traits (e.g. negative emotionality) which are interpreted as symptoms. The features a diagnostician focuses on may be consequences of extreme levels of personality traits (1), problematic configurations of trait levels (2) or extreme adaptations to personality traits (3).
Personality traits influence how individuals interpret and construe life events. Trait levels refer to an individual’s specific dispositions. There are three trait dimensions:
Treatment planners should know about four things:
Individuals with certain genotypes select environment that provides stability for their personality
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Psychological Assessment – Interim exam 1 summary [UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM]
This bundle contains the articles and lectures for the first interim exam of the course "Psychological Assessment" given at the University of Amsterdam. It contains the following materials:
- Lecture 1 (Wright (2011); Gregory (2014); Bijttebier et al. (2019).
- Lecture 2 (Wright (2011).
- Lecture 3 (Barelds (2016); Cohen (2013); Cohen (2018).
- Lecture 4 (Verhoeven (2014); Kessel (2019).
- Lecture 5 (Cohen (2018); Folkman (2004); Latham (2012); Schaufeli (2009).
Psychological Assessment – Interim exam 2 summary [UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM]This bundle contains the articles and lectures for the second interim exam of the course "Psychological Assessment" given at the University of Amsterdam. It contains the following materials:
- Lecture 1: De Vogel, Van den Broek, & de Vries (2014); Hanson & Morton-Bourgon (2005).
- Lecture 2: Verhulp, Stevens, Van de Schoot, & Vollebergh (2013)
- Lecture 3 / Lecture 4: Scholing & Visser (2019); Van Zandvoort (2019); Luteijn (2019)
- Lecture 5: Scholing, Emmelkamp & Van den Heuvell (2019); Barry, Frick & Kamphaus (2013)
- Lecture 6: Harkness & Lilienfeld (1997); Miller (1991)
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