Term
| How can we define science? |
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Definition
| Science is an applied epistemology (approach to knowledge) that features specialized ways of forming beliefs |
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Term
| List and discuss three essential components of a process for it to be appropriately classified as science. |
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Definition
1- Testability
2- Empiricism
3- Falsifiability |
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Term
| Name and discuss three cognitive biases that influence mental health clinicians. |
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Definition
1- Confirmation bias
2- Illusory Correlation
3- Hindsight bias |
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Term
| Explain why the confirmation bias causes difficulties for good mental health treatment. |
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Definition
| A clinician might look for characteristics that fit a disorder they have in mind rather than pay attention to all the characteristics which would lead to a more likely diagnosis |
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Term
| Explain why the illusory correlation bias causes difficulties for good mental health treatment |
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Definition
| This could lead to a therapist diagnosing someone as having OCPD because they're vigilant in keeping everything very clean (in other words they may not have a disorder, it could be that they're just anal. However since being anal and having OCPD seem to go together, the diagnosis might be given) |
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Term
| Explain why the hindsight bias causes difficulties for good mental health treatment |
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Definition
| If a client comes in that a colleague referred because you're a depression expert, you might look for depression symptoms rather than look at the symptoms as a whole, which could lead to an incorrect diagnosis |
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Term
| Define the confirmation bias |
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Definition
| The tendency to selectively seek out and recall information consistent with one's hypotheses and to neglect or reinterpret information inconsistent with them |
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Term
| Define illusory correlation |
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Definition
| The perception of a relationship where none exists, or perception of a stronger relationship than actually exists. |
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Term
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Definition
| The tendency to see past events as more predictable than they actually were at the time. |
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Term
| Discuss three reasons why science is crucial to the study of clinical psychology. |
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Definition
1.Humans can hold beliefs that are wrong (specifically clinicians and researchers can hold beliefs that are wrong)
2.Most people are unaware that they have incorrect beliefs/have cognitive biases
3.Scientific methods can help protect against cognitive biases |
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Term
| Name and discuss three ways to enhance experiential learning, such as is necessary for people to increase their clinical care provision abilities. How does each way contribute to the experiential learning process? |
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Definition
•Compare your experience to known excellence so you can see if your experience measures up to something that is definitively known to be good
1- Get direct feedback (both positive and negative). Positive feedback lets you know what you're doing right while negative feedback lets you know what mistakes you are making so you can correct them in the future
2-Study your mistakes so you know why you made them and how to avoid future mistakes
3- Check for errors to make sure your work has been done correctly |
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Term
| Name and discuss three ways to reduce the effects of cognitive bias on clinical mental health work. |
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Definition
1- Conceptualize problems in multiple ways. While you may think you have a firm grasp of a problem, looking at it in another light may reveal aspects you were not aware of before
2- Formulate and test multiple working hypotheses. While one diagnosis may jump to mind as soon as you notice the symptoms, thinking of other possible disorders it may be could increase your chances of getting the correct diagnosis (since your first guess won't be right 100% of the time)
3- Recognize personal experience is anecdotal evidence. You may have had several clients come in with similar symptoms that turned out to have depression, but depression shares symptoms with other disorders that this person may suffer from |
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Term
| Define the term actuarial judgement. |
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Definition
| A method for combining or interpreting information in which clinical judgement is eliminated in reaching conclusions. It is based on routinized, objective methods where the same data yield the same conclusion. |
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Term
| Define clinical judgement |
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Definition
| A method of data synthesis that relies on subjective judgment. |
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Term
| Which is used more frequently for clinical decision making, actuarial or clinical judgement and why? |
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Definition
| Clinical; Because a person naturally assumes things based on his or her experience and because of a person's tendency to assume that he or she is not being influenced by a cognitive bias |
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Term
| Which is better for clinical decision making, actuarial or clinical judgement and why? |
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Definition
| Actuarial because your subjective opinion (even though it is based on experience) may be flawed by cognitive biases and because actuarial judgement do not change from clinician to clinician |
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Term
| Define the term base rate. |
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Definition
| The frequency with which something occurs |
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Term
| How can the concept of base rates be used to increase good clinical decision making? |
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Definition
| Base rates can help clinicians determine how often the diagnosis they are thinking of actually happens and gives them an idea of how likely it is that the diagnosis fits the client's problem |
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Term
| Give an example of an actuarial judgement |
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Definition
| If you give someone a depression test and they fall just below the cutoff for depression, you do not diagnose them as depressed, even if you have interviewed that person and decided, using your clinical judgement, that they suffer from depression |
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Term
| Is it better to have a higher positive predictor power or negative predictor power? Why? |
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Definition
| Negative. It is better to say a person has a disorder when they don't than say a person doesn't have a disorder when they do. At least in the false positive, that person will get treatment and be determined not to have a disorder, whereas a false negative person who has a disorder will not get the treatment they need |
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Term
| What is the difference between sensitivity and specificity? |
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Definition
| Sensitivity looks at if a person has the disorder you are testing for, whereas specificity looks at if the person does NOT have the disorder. Another way of looking at it is sensitivity is concerned with the degree to which someone is depressed in order to determine if they are CLINICALLY depressed and specificity looks at if a person is depressed or psychotic |
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Term
| What is the difference between validity and reliability? |
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Definition
| Validity wants to know if what you're testing for is what the test is measuring and reliability wants to make sure the test is giving you the same answer consistently |
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Term
| Name and discuss three different types of validity. Which is most important to verify when using a test for a clinical purpose, and why? |
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Definition
1- Content validity: a way of determining if what the test measures is what it is supposed to measure. This is the most important because if your test is supposed to measure something that it isn't measuring, it is useless
2- Discriminant/divergent validity: does the test show low correlations with other tests that measure different concepts or characteristic. Least important because there may be shared characteristics amongst different disorders, so different tests may have similar features even though they measure different things
3- Convergent validity: does the test correlate with others test that measure the same concept or characteristics |
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Term
| Name and describe three goals for classification systems. How well do you think the DSM-IV meet these goals? Why does it do well or poorly with each goal? |
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Definition
1- Nomenclature: Allows professionals to communicate with one another by creating a professional language to describe characteristics or concepts. The DSM does this well, as it is used by most professionals in the field and can establish the language used
2- Description: Characteristics or criteria that help to separate different entities or disorders. The DSM does not do very well with this because many disorders overlap and the DSM has difficulty addressing comorbidity
3- Prediction: Using the characteristics of behavior to choose the best treatment based on what the diagnoses is. The DSM does better on some disorders and not on others, although since this is mostly due to lack of sufficient research, the DSM really isn't to blame |
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Term
| Name two different types of classification systems, and describe one strength and one weakness of each type. Which do you think would be the most useful approach to categorizing mental health disorders, and why? |
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Definition
Categorical: Great for a biological approach to disorders which looks at disorders as individual, separate diseases and has good inter-rater reliability, but does not allow for comorbidity or ranges of severity. It also runs into the problem of labeling people, which could cause problems
Dimensional: Better for categorizing mental health disorders because it allows for a range or spectrum of the disorder (e.g. mildly depressed, major depressive disorder) and blends of more than one disorder (depressed with mild OCPD). However it is difficult practically when you consider that yes/no answers are often needed (does this person need treatment?) |
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Term
| Describe the “ultimate clinical question.” |
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Definition
| "WHAT treatment, by WHOM, is most effective for THIS individual with THAT specific problem, under WHICH set of circumstances, and HOW does it come about?" |
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Term
| What insight does the ultimate clinical question give to answering the more general question, “does psychotherapy work?” |
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Definition
| It shows that the general question cannot be answered in those terms, because so much depends on other factors |
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Term
| What are the three major domains essential to psychotherapy? |
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Definition
| At least one client (first domain) and one therapist (second domain) interacting over some finite period of time (third domain) |
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Term
| Discuss two variables within the client domain of psychotherapy and why they are important |
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Definition
Distressing behavior: excesses, deficits, or inappropriate timing in aspects of motoric, cognitive, and ideational or physiological emotional functioning. Affects what treatments can/should be used and predicts how well that person will do with the different treatments
His or her physical-social life environment: family, friends, and work settings and events, external stimuli, economic and social resources. Could provide assets or liabilities for change. |
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Term
| Discuss two variables within the therapist domain of psychotherapy and why they are important |
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Definition
Therapeutic techniques: verbal and nonverbal psychosocial procedures defined by their nature, frequency, content, and timing; psychotropic drugs and discrete somatic interventions. Independent variable of greatest interest, outcome of therapy rests entirely on which therapy/technique is used
Treatment environment: characteristics of the treatment setting, facility demographics and reputation, and fee structure. These interactions may affect the outcome by facilitating or hindering treatment |
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Term
| Discuss two variables within the time domain of psychotherapy and why they are important |
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Definition
Initial contact (assessment) determines the course of therapy and ample time needs to be allowed for this to occur properly
Termination is important in order for the client to become a fully functioning person that does not use therapy as a crutch |
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Term
| Name and describe the four possible outcomes of using a test to diagnose a mental health disorder. |
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Definition
1- Sensitivity (does the person have the disorder you're testing for?)
2- False positive (Test says someone has the disorder when the person doesn't)
3- False Negative (Test says the person doesn't have the disorder when they do)
4- Specificity (if the person does not have the disorder you're testing for) |
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Term
| What is the availability heuristic? |
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Definition
| A mental shortcut for judging the probability or frequency of an event by using the ease with which instances can be retrieved from memory as a guide |
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Term
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Definition
| Numbers that allow comparison of an individual's test score with the scores of a relevant group |
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Term
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Definition
| The degree to which a test yields consistent results |
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Term
| What is the difference between efficacy and effectiveness research? |
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Definition
| Efficacy research emphasizes internal validity in controlled laboratory settings and effectiveness research emphasizes external validity in real world situations. |
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Term
| What is the uniformity assumption myth? |
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Definition
| Term used to describe incorrect assumptions in psychotherapy research, in the absence of measurement or documentation, that clients, therapists, and psychotherapy were more alike than different |
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Term
| What does idiographic mean? |
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Definition
| Relating to investigative procedures that concentrate on the unique characteristics of a single person, studying them in depth as in case study. |
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Term
| What is a randomized controlled trial (RCT)? |
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Definition
| An experimental research strategy that assigns to experimental conditions participants assumed to be homogenous with respect to the variable of interest |
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Term
| What is generalizability? |
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Definition
| Sometimes referred to as external validity, the extent to which research results can be applied to the populations and settings that are of primary interest |
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