PSY 341 Exam 1 Questions and Correct Answers |
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clinical assessment
Ans: the systematic evaluation and measurement of psychological,
biological and social factors in an individual presenting with a possible
psychological disorder
diagnosis
Ans: the process of determining whether the particular problem
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afflicting the individual meets all criteria for a psychological disorder, as
set forth in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
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Mental Disorders, or DSM-5
reliability
Ans: the degree to which a measurement is consistent
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3 concepts to value assessments
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Ans: reliability, validity and standardization
inter-rater reliability
Ans: tactic used by psychologists to improve reliability; carefully
designing their assessment devices and then conducting research on
them to ensure that two or more raters will get the same answers
test-retest reliability
Ans: determining whether assessment techniques are stable across time
validity
Ans: whether something measures what it is designed to measure;
whether a technique assesses what it is supposed to
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concurrent/descriptive validity
Ans: comparing the results of an assessment measure under
consideration with the results of others that are better known allows you
to begin to determine the validity of the first measure
EX: if the results from a standard, but long, IQ test were essentially the
same as the results from a new, brief version, you could conclude that
the brief version had concurrent validity
predictive validity
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Ans: how well your assessment tells you what will happen in the future;
EX: does it predict who will succeed in school and who will not?
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standardization
Ans: the process by which a certain set of standards or norms is
determined for a technique to make its use consistent across different
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measurements
clinical interview
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Ans: the core of most clinical work; gathers information on current and
past behavior, attitudes, and emotions, and a history of the individual's
life in general and of the presenting problem
mental status exam
Ans: systematic observation of an individual's behavior; the exam
covers five categories: appearance and behavior, thought processes,
mood and affect, intellectual function, and sensorium
appearance and behavior
Ans: any overt physical behaviors (legs twitching, etc) as well as the
individual's dress, general appearance, posture, and facial expression
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EX: psychomotor retardation (slow and effortful motor behavior) may
indicate severe depression
thought processes
Ans: rate or flow of speech; continuity of speech; content of speech;
does the patient make sense when talking, or are ideas present with no
apparent connection?
mood and affect
Ans: mood = predominant feeling state of the individual; affect =
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feeling state accompanying what individual says;
EX: if your friend is talking about how her mother just died and was
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laughing, her affect would be inappropriate for the situation; if your
friend is talking about a range of happy and sad things with no affect
whatsoever, than the affect is "blunted" or "flat"
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intellectual function
Ans: making a rough estimate of intelligence usually just by talking to
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the individual - do they have a reasonable vocabulary; do they use
abstraction and metaphors; how is their memory
sensorium
Ans: our general awareness of our surroundings; what the date is, what
time it is, who he/she is; people with permanent or temporary brain
damage may not know the answers to these; EX: if the patient is aware of
the time, place and person a clinician might say the patient's sensorium
is "oriented times three" and "clear"
thought process complications
Ans: loose association or derailment = a disorganized speech pattern
found in some patients with schizophrenia;
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delusions of persecution = where someone thinks people are after him
and out to get him all the time; delusions of grandeur = an individual
thinks she is all-powerful in some way; ideas of reference = everything
everyone else does somehow relates back to the individual;
hallucinations = things a person sees or hears when those things aren't
really there
semi-structured clinical interviews
Ans: made up of questions that have been carefully phrased and tested
to elicit useful information in a consistent manner so that clinicians can
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be sure they have inquired about the most important aspects of
particular disorders; they may also depart from set questions to follow
up on specific issues
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cons of semi-structured clinical interviews
Ans: may inhibit robs the interview of some of the spontaneous quality
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of two people talking about a problem; if applied too rigidly, it may
inhibit the patient from volunteering useful information that is not
directly relevant to the questions being asked
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physical examination
Ans: many patients with problems first go to a family physician and are
given a physical; symptoms can be related to things such as drug use,
etc. or finding out complications from current medications that could be
causing behavior
behavioral assessment
Ans: takes the mental status exam one step further by using direct
observation to assess formally an individual's thoughts, feelings and
behavior in specific situations or contexts; may be more appropriate
when the individual cannot report their problems/ experiences because