Psychological Assessment 1 Flashcards
What is a category vs. criteria?
The DSM has many categories - chapters that contain many types of disorders
each category holds a set of criteria and these determine whether or not you are part of that category
How are categories useful in psychology?
They help us talk about terms in the same way throughout the field
Not all DSM categories mean the same thing, what can they be compared to one another as?
Diabetes: likely to have it all throughout your life
A cold: you have a cold while you have a cold but it’s not a permanent change to who you are that lasts through your life
What are 2 examples of disorders that are like a cold?
OCD
Panic disorder
Once you get through the disorder, don’t meet the criteria anymore
What is an example of a disorder like diabetes?
A specific learning disability - you mainly have these all throughout your lifetime
- a small sub-group can get over it if an intervention is given
What are DSM categories described best, a cold or diabetes?
colds: you have it when you meet the criteria, and you don’t have it if you don’t meet the criteria - you have a diagnosis only for as long as you meet the criteria
How do we decide something is in a category or not?
- many characteristics are normally distributed under the graph
for example: everyone experiences some degree of fear of negative evaluation, some experience low levels and others experience high levels, lots of people are somewhere in the middle - You have more or less of any given trait at any given time
ex: we all have some level of social anxiety
How are questionnaires designed to think about things?
Dimensionally
ex: like a scale, looking at things on a point system
What is a specifier?
It is something to note when diagnosing if there is a specific thing to add, for example in autism we specify with or without intellectual diability
What is a risk factor?
that lists characteristics, experiences, or situations that are associated with an increased likelihood of developing that specific mental health disorder
What is a differential diagnosis?
if you’re considering 2 different diagnoses, how do u know what the difference is between this and the other disorder
ARFED:
eating disturbance - lack of interest in eating food, avoidance based on sensory characteristics, concerned about aversive consequences of eating with one or more:
- sig weight loss
- nutritional deficiency
- dependence on internal feeding, supplements
- interference with psychosocial functioning
ARFED - what category is it in? reasons for not eating that would lead to a diagnosis:
- eating disorders category
- Autism: avoidance based on sensory characteristics of food, many people diagnosed with this are autistic
-If someone has a specific phobia of vomiting or choking and their safety-seeking behaviour is avoiding categories or types of food and this can lead to low weight
How is ARFED different from diagnoses like autism and OCD?
ARFED has a description of the overt problem behaviour you’re witnessing (not eating) but you can have radically different conceptualizations for why it’s happening
Autism and OCD - there is an internal logic, it tells you something meaningful about the mechanisms that’s keeping the problem alive
What is a diagnosis that can be similar to the RFED diagnosis criteria?
ODD or CD: we see lots of behaviours that are problems, but there are many different reasons for why these behaviours are problems, which can be different
Could you reengineer a diagnosis if you just saw the category?
NO!
Are some DSM categories applied to different ages of development?
Yes, it’s like looking at the same criteria for a disorder (ex: OCD) for a 3-year-old and a 90-year-old, which is a challenge!
What is “boundary with normality” in the ICD-11?
- explaining things that are common in the general population (intrusive thoughts and repetitive behaviours (ex: checking that a door is locked)
- they explain that OCD is diagnosed when these things cause distress and are time-consuming
What is the ASEBA?
- Child behaviour checklist - behavioural questionnaire for 18 and under
- parent fills it out but child can too and teacher
- scores can be compared to the norm group
- consistent with dimensional approach (each question is answered on a scale from 0-2)
What are syndrome scale scores for the ASEBA?
Syndrome scale: symptoms that seem to hang together statistically
They gave the items to a large group of people and then statistically combined to see what seems to hang together
Can we compare the syndrome scales to the norm group?
Yes, you can compare them and get percentiles + t-scores
- determines if a syndrome is in the clinical range (2SD), or borderline range (1.5SD away from mean)
What are meta-syndromes for the ASEBA:
Internalizing Problems
Externalizing Problems
What is a unique way we can separate the items on the ASEBA?
we can see what items tend to map on to DSM criteria in the different existing categories that we have and look at those scores as if they’re dimensions
- can suggest what they are exhibiting, doesn’t meet they meet the criteria
Can we compare ASEBA item scores across informants?
Yes, we can statistically compare different raters and then you can see if they agree to the extent that is the average amount of agreement
- No one acts the same in different settings so likely for correlations to be low
parent x teacher: mean .23
parent x child: mean .29
teacher x child: mean: .19
