ELE PEC - Unit 2: Assessment and Diagnosis/The Helping Process

Clinical Assessment

It is used to promote and enhance children’s well-being by accomplishing effective solutions to the problems they are faced with on a day-to-day basis

Idiographic Case Formulation

It involves a detailed understanding of the child or family as a unique entity

Nomothetic Case Formulation

It emphasizes more general inferences that apply to broad groups of individuals.

Clinical Description

It summarizes the child’s unique behaviors, thoughts, and feelings that together make up the features of a given psychological disorder.

Clinical Description

It is the first step in understanding a child’s problem by establishing a basic information about the child’s concerns at presentation.

Diagnosis

_______ involves analyzing information and drawing conclusions about the nature or cause of the problem, and, in some instances, assigning a formal diagnosis (which is referred to as taxonomic diagnosis)

Taxonomic Diagnosis

Focuses on the formal assignment of cases to specific categories drawn from a system of classification such as the DSM-5 or from empirically derived traits or dimensions.

Problem-Solving Analysis

It views diagnosis as a process of gathering information that is used to understand the nature of an individual’s problem, its possible causes, treatment options, and outcomes.

Prognosis

It involves generating predictions regarding future behavior under specified conditions

Treatment Planning

It involves making use of assessment information to generate a treatment plan and evaluating its effectiveness

True

Clinical assessment relies on a multi-method assessment strategy, which emphasizes obtaining information from different informants, in a variety of settings, using a variety of procedures that may include interviews, observations, questionnaires, and tests.

[True or False]

Clinical Interviews

The most universally used assessment procedure can provide a large amount of information in a brief period of time. The interviewer may observe the nonverbal communication cues such as the facial expression, voice, mannerisms, and motor behavior

Unstructured Interviews

In ______, questions are pursued in an informal and flexible manner; lack of standardization may result in low reliability, and selective or biased gathering of information.

Semi-Structured Interviews

In _______, specific questions are asked to elicit information in a consistent and thorough manner; may be susceptible to a loss of spontaneity between the child and clinician, and reluctance to volunteer important information that is not directly related to the particular questions.

Behavioral Assessment

It is a strategy for evaluating the child’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in specific settings, and then using this information to formulate hypotheses about the nature of the problem and what can be done about it. Emphasis on observing a child’s behavior directly, rather than inferring how children think, behave, or feel on the basis of their descriptions of images they draw

Antecedents

Behavioral Assessment involves observing the _________ or the events that immediately precedes a behavior, the Behaviors of interest, and the Consequences of the behaviors (the “ABCs of assessment”).

Behavior Analysis

The more general approach to behavioral assessment is ________ (or functional analysis of behavior), the goal of which is to systematically identify as many factors as possible that could be contributing to a child’s problem behaviors, and to develop hypotheses about which ones are the most important and/or most easily changed.

Child Behavior Checklist

The ________, developed by Thomas Achenbach and colleagues is a leading checklist for assessing behavioral problems in children and adolescents ages 6-18.

Tests

These are tasks given under standard conditions with the purpose of assessing some aspect of the child’s knowledge, skill, or personality.

Scales

Clinicians commonly use ______ and tests to assess children’s difficulties and are the most commonly used assessment methods with children—test scores should always be interpreted in the context of other assessment information.

Developmental Tests

_______ are used to assess infants and young children and are generally carried out for the purpose of screening, diagnosis, and evaluation of early development

Screening

It refers to identifying children at risk who are then referred for a more thorough evaluation.

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-IV)

The most popular intelligence scale used today with children is the _______, which is well-standardized, reliable, and valid; it provides measures of verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory, and processing speed.

Projective Testing

It involves presenting the child with ambiguous stimuli and asking the child to describe what he or she sees; it is believed that the child projects his or her own personality, including unconscious fears, needs, and inner conflicts, on the ambiguous stimuli.

Personality

________ is usually considered an enduring trait or pattern of traits that characterized the individual and determine how he or she interacts with the environment.

Neuropsychology

It is the study of brain behavior relations

Neuropsychological Assessment

It attempts to link brain functioning with objective measures of behavior that are known to depend on an intact central nervous system

Neuropsychological Assessments

_________ usually consist of comprehensive batteries that assess a full range of psychological functions column verbal and nonverbal cognitive functions such as language, abstract reasoning, and problem solving; perceptual functions including visual, auditory, and tactile-kinesthetic; motor functions relating to strength, speed of performance, coordination, and dexterity; and emotional or executive control function said such as attention, concentration, frustration tolerance, and emotional functioning.

False

Assessment procedures are observation methods used under real-world conditions, often with refinements designed to permit greater precision and accuracy

[True or False]

Target Behavior Assessment

It includes a variety of possible approaches that rely on the direct observation and measurement of precisely defined behaviors.

Speech Pathologist

Diagnosis and assessment of problems in speech and language is one of the primary functions of the _______, a specialist in the assessment treatment of language disorders.

Audiologist

Although a speech pathologist can determine the presence of hearing difficulties in a special child, hearing is best evaluated by an _______, a specialist in the assessment of hearing functions and hearing impairments

Classification

It refers to a system for representing the major categories or dimensions of child psychopathology, and the boundaries and relations among them

Diagnosis

It refers to the assignment of cases of categories of the classification system