Chapter 5 - Assessment and Classification

Question 0

Mental Status Exam

Answer 0

Clinical interview organized into major categories designed to determine a person’s cognitive processes.

Question 1

Assessment

Answer 1

The process of gathering information about a person so that you can make a clinical decision about that person’s symptoms.

Question 2

Flight of Ideas

Answer 2

Responses that are not related to the question asked or that tell a narrative in which each sentence is not related to the one that came before it.

Question 3

Delusional Thinking

Answer 3

An unrealistic pattern of thoughts forming a theme.

Question 4

Obsessional Thinking

Answer 4

A pattern of repeated thoughts beyond the control of the person.

Question 5

Structured Interview

Answer 5

An interview that is highly structured in terms of the questions asked, allowing for better consistency across interviewers and clients.

Question 6

Structured Clinical Interview for DSM Disorders (SCID)

Answer 6

An interview that directly probes for the existence of the criteria for disorders within the current classification manual, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).

Question 7

Classification

Answer 7

A way to organize the diversity seen in mental disorders.

Question 8

Cultural Formulation Interview (CFI)

Answer 8

A set of questions developed to help mental health professionals obtain information concerning the person’s culture and its influence on behavior and experience.

Question 9

Reliability

Answer 9

Consistency of the instrument.

Question 10

Validity

Answer 10

How accurate something is.

Question 11

Beck Depression Inventory (BDI)

Answer 11

A questionnaire useful for determining the level of depressive symptoms that a person is reporting.

Question 12

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

Answer 12

A test with 567 items of a true-false nature to help determine if a person endorses more or less of a category of experiences than the general population; used to asses broad mental disorders.

Question 13

Projective Instruments

Answer 13

Ambiguous stimuli are used to elicit the internal cognitive and emotional organization of a person’s psychological processes.

Question 14

Rorschach Inkblot

Answer 14

Inkblots developed by Herman Rorschach; they were made by dripping ink on a piece of paper and then folding it in half to create a symmetrical design; it functions as a projective technique.

Question 15

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Answer 15

A testing instrument composed of 30 black-and-white drawings of various scenes and people; by noting the content and emotionality of the individual’s responses, it is possible to gain insight into his or her thoughts, emotions, and motivations including areas of conflict.

Question 16

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)

Answer 16

A common intelligence test with a number of subscales designed to measure verbal and performance tasks.

Question 17

Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST)

Answer 17

A test that requires that an individual sort cards into four piles; each card has a specific shape on it such as a circle or square, and each card has a specific number of these shapes and each card is printed in a specific color; thus, you could sort the cards by shape, by number, or by color.

Question 18

Continuous Performance Test (CPT)

Answer 18

A test that measures attentional characteristics.

Question 19

Give the six major categories in the mental status exam.

Answer 19

1) Individual’s appearance and behavior
2) Mood and affect
3) Speech quality
4) Thought processes
5) Perceptions and awareness of the surroundings
6) Intellectual functioning and insight

Question 20

Give the five domains on which the Cultural Formation Interview focuses.

Answer 20

1) Cultural identity of the individual
2) Cultural conceptualizations of distress
3) Psychosocial stressors and cultural features of vulnerability
4) Culture features of the relationship between the individual and the clinician
5) Overall cultural assessment

Question 21

Give the four types of reliability.

Answer 21

1) Internal reliability
2) Test-retest reliability
3) Alternative form reliability
4) Inter-rater reliability

Question 22

Describe internal reliability.

Answer 22

Internal reliability assesses whether or not the questions asked in a test relate to each other (in other words, they all measure the same or similar things).

Question 23

Describe test-retest reliability.

Answer 23

Test-retest reliability is the idea that if a test is given multiple times, similar scores will be achieved (especially important if the construct being measured is expected to be relatively stable).

Question 24

Describe alternative form reliability.

Answer 24

Alternative form reliability is the idea that different forms of a test (for instance, an IQ test) give the same or similar results.

Question 25

Describe inter-rater reliability.

Answer 25

Inter-rater reliability asks how similarly two or more individuals will answer when they observe and rate specific behaviors.

Question 26

Give the five different types of validity.

Answer 26

1) Content validity
2) Predictive validity
3) Concurrent validity
4) Construct validity
5) Ecological validity

Question 27

Describe content validity.

Answer 27

Content validity is the degree to which an instrument measures all aspects of the phenomenon.

Question 28

Describe predictive validity.

Answer 28

Predictive validity is the degree to which an instrument can predict cognitions, emotions, or actions that a person will experience in the future.

Question 29

Describe concurrent validity.

Answer 29

Concurrent validity is the ability of an instrument to show similar results to other established measures of the construct.

Question 30

Describe construct validity.

Answer 30

Construct validity is the extent to which an instrument measures what it was designed to measure.

Question 31

Describe ecological validity.

Answer 31

Ecological validity refers to the manner in which data collected has been considered beyond the local context. What other factors could be influencing the information obtained?

Question 32

Give the five different purposes of classification.

Answer 32

1) Nomenclature
2) Basis of information retrieval
3) Descriptive system
4) Predictive system
5) Basis for a theory of psychopathology