PSYC 188 Midterm 1

Why do we diagnose disorders?

• Identify, describe, & classify psychological disorders

• Determine the causes of the disorder

• Treat & prevent disorder

  • Increase use of evidence-based practice

  • Advocacy (typically with children)

What is the APA definition of diagnosis?

Where are Impulse Control Disorders in the DSM-5TR & what are the diagnoses in that category?

• Disruptive, Impulse-Control, & Conduct Disorders

• Other disorders in the category:

  • Oppositional Defiant Disorder

  • Intermittent Explosive Disorder

  • Conduct Disorder

  • Antisocial Personality Disorder

  • Pyromania

  • Kleptomania

What are the behavioral indicators of disorders?

• Time course

  • Developmental delay

  • Developmental regression

  • Difficulty persists over time

• Quantitative indicators

  • Extremely high or low frequency

  • Extremely high or low intensity

• Qualitative indicators

  • Inappropriate to the situation

  • Behavior qualitatively different from normal

    • Behavior itself is the problem, not necessarily the frequency

How is culture considered in the diagnostic process?

• Deviance is always related to cultural standards

• Culture acts as a guide to:

  • Shaping normal & abnormal development

  • Defining & labeling abnormality

  • Conceptualizing & explaining problem behavior

  • Treating psychopathology

What are equifinality, multifinality, & multideterminism, & how do they related to developmental pathways?

• Equifinality: Different pathways may lead to similar expressions of psychopathology

  • People with different backgrounds can end up with the same diagnosis

• Multifinality: Similar initial pathways may result in different forms of dysfunction

• Multideterminism: Etiology of any psychopathology is determined by many different factors

What are the fundamentals of research?

• Theory: Broad explanations for a wide range of phenomena

• Hypotheses: Testable assumptions derived from theories

  • Uses operational definitions

  • Falsifiable

  • Used to guide collection of empirical data

What are validity & reliability?

• Validity: A study measures what it is supposed to measure

  • Internal validity: Ruling out other explanations through control

  • External validity: How much you can generalize this result to other subjects, situations, & populations

• Reliability: Repeatability/consistency of measures

What is a case study, & what are its advantages & disadvantages as a research design?

• Focus is on the individual

• Advantages:

  • Study rare conditions

  • Illustrate:

    • Nature

    • Course

    • Outcomes

• Disadvantages:

  • Biases

  • Reliability

  • Validity

What is an interview, & what are its advantages & disadvantages?

• May be:

  • Unstructured

  • Semi-structured

    • Initial question is read verbatim, but follow up questions can be more free form

  • Structured

• Advantages:

  • Can probe, expand, & clarify responses

  • Structured or semi-structured interviews may be more reliable & valid

• Disadvantages:

  • Time consuming

  • Subject must be willing & able to report

  • Interviewer desirability bias

What is a questionnaire, & what are its advantages & disadvantages?

• Advantages:

  • Highly structured

  • Not time consuming

  • Can obtain a lot of information

• Disadvantages:

  • Cannot probe, expand, & clarify responses

  • Subject must be willing & able to report

  • Non-responders

What is observation, & what are its advantages & disadvantages?

• Directly observing someone’s behavior

• Common in childhood disorders

• Advantages:

  • Structured or naturalistic

• Disadvantages:

  • Time consuming

  • Coding system influences

  • Subjects react to observation

What are the differences between within-subjects experiments & between-subjects experiments?

• Within-subjects experiments

  • Each different condition is applied to each subject

• Between-subjects experiments

  • Different conditions are applied to different subjects

  • Each subject receives only one condition

  • Random assignment needed

What are cross-sectional designs? Longitudinal?

• Cross-sectional design

  • Measures age difference

  • Quick to do

  • Differences may be due to generational variables

• Longitudinal design

  • Measures developmental change

  • Longer, more expensive, dropouts, repeat testing

What do the terms incidence rates, prevalence rates, & lifetime prevalence mean?

• Incidence rates: Number of new cases of a disorder in a specific time period

• Prevalence rates: All cases observed at a specific point in time

• Lifetime prevalence: Number or proportion of cases of a disorder diagnosed at any time in life

Why are cultural consideration important in clinical psychology?

• Superordinate to all work that psychologists do

• Culture shapes how clients understand their problems

In what ways has the APA made efforts to incorporate cultural considerations?

• Journals & books on cultural topics

• New APA divisions

  • Ex. Division 35-Society for the Psychology of Women

• Revisions to APA ethical code

  • Competence

  • Discrimination

  • Interpreting assessment results

• APA accreditation standards

• Revisions to recent editions of DSM

  • Text describing cultural variations of disorders

  • Culture-bound syndromes

• Revision of prominent assessment methods

What are the main components of cultural competence?

• Awareness

  • Including self-awareness

• Knowledge

  • About diverse cultures

• Skills

What are some of the criticisms of cultural competence?

• End up stereotyping or lumping them in categories

• People aren’t just one thing

• We make mistakes when we decide other people’s identities & which identity is most important

What is cultural humility?

• Cultural humility is a process that involves:

  • a lifelong commitment to self-evaluation & self-critique

  • a desire to fix power imbalances where none ought to exist

  • aspiring to develop partnerships with people & groups who advocate for others

What are the ways of defining culture?

• There are narrow & broad options, & the ADDRESSING framework is helpful for this:

  • Age & generational differences

  • Developmental disabilities

  • Disabilities acquired later in life

  • Religion & spiritual orientation

  • Ethnicity & race

  • Socioeconomic status

  • Sexual orientation

  • Indigenous heritage

  • National origin

  • Gender

What are the advantages & disadvantages of diagnosis?

• Advantages:

  • Clinical usefulness

    • More information after a diagnosis than before

  • Prediction (prognosis)

  • Planning treatment

  • Helping individuals obtain services

  • Helping parents

• Disadvantages:

  • Oversimplifies, minimizes individuality

  • Exclusive focus on the individual, instead of relational context

  • Distinctions between normality & abnormality are sometimes arbitrary

  • Often unclear boundaries between diagnostic categories

  • Certain criteria are subjective

  • Stigma

    • Confirmation bias

    • Stereotype threat

What are the biological influences on psychopathology?

• Brain development

• Neurobiology

• Endocrine system

• Neurotransmitters

• Genetics

What are the emotional influences on psychopathology?

• Emotion reactivity: Threshold & intensity of emotional experience

• Emotion regulation: Ability to monitor, evaluate, & modify one’s emotional reactions to accomplish a goal

• Dysregulation

  • Underregulation: Expression uncontrolled

  • Overregulation: Inability to express one’s feelings

What are the behavioral & cognitive influences on psychopathology?

• Operant conditioning

• Social learning

What are the different assessment techniques and their purposes of use?

• Clinical interviews

  • To gain information about developmental & family histories

• Behavioral assessment

  • To define & measure specific, observable target behaviors

• Psychological testing

  • To measure ability, symptom severity, & brain-behavior functioning, & support diagnosis & treatment planning

What are the parts of the brain stem & their functions?

• Midbrain: Motor supply to muscles

• Pons: Face sensation & movement

• Medulla: Breathing, heartbeat, digestion

• Cerebellum: Controls motor & mental coordination

• Thalamus: Relay station for sensory input

• Hypothalamus: Regulates behavior & emotion

What are the functions of the limbic system?

• Regulates emotional experiences

• Regulates expressions

• Regulates basic drives

• Critical for learning & impulse control

What are the functions of the basal ganglia?

• Regulates, organizes, & filters info related to cognition, emotions, mood, & motor function

• Highly connected to frontal lobes

What are the functions of the brain lobes?

• Frontal lobes

  • Thinking

  • Reasoning

  • Working memory

  • Ability to make sense of social relationships

  • Delayed gratification

  • Self-control

  • Social cognition

• Parietal lobes

  • Integrate signals

• Temporal lobes

  • Expression & regulation of emotion

  • Memory

  • Language

What are sensitivity & specificity in an assessment tool, & what does each tell you?

• Sensitivity: Ability to correctly identify people who have the disorder

• Specificity: Ability to correctly identify people who do not have the disorder