Evaluating the child's problems by evaluating a variety of potential presenting problems and measure various aspects of youngsters themselves, in various contexts

-Information is obtained from a variety of sources

What goes on during a general clinical interview?

The clinician gathers information on all areas of functioning by interviewing the child and other people in the child's life. 

-Developing and mainting rapport

-Questioning style

-Reflective listening

-Interpreting verbal and non-verbal behavior

-Making a diagnosis. 

Squarely Faced

Open Posture

Lean in

Eye contact

Relaxed 

Silence may be the most non-directive listening technique

Many people are uncomfortable with silence

Interviews that are likely to be more reliable and to derive a diagnosis. 

A set of questions that the interviewer asks the child with rules and guidelines about how to score the responses. 

Child Behavior Checklist

the Personality Inventory for Children (Revised) and the

Behavior Assesment System for Children.

A respondent to indicate the presence or absence of certain behaviors in a child.

This information is collected for a large number of children and statistical techniques are used to see if a child is performing like other same age children or abnormally. 

Observing a set of behaviors that can be coded:

Made in child's natural environment

Range from a single discrete behavior (hitting) to observation of interactions between family members.

Limitations to Observational Assesment:

Reactivity, whether the knowledge that one is being observed changes one's behavior. 

The difficulty and expense involved in training observers is the Primary problem. 

-Use ambiguous stimuli to allow children to project "unacceptable" thoughts onto the stimulus. 

Ex: The Rorschach test(Ink Blot)

Thematic Apperception Test (tell a story with ambiguous picture)

Used to measure intellegent using intellegent tests:

The Stanford-Binet, Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children

IQ Score

Critique: Tests are culturally biased 

USed to asses children between 2 and 42 mo. old

Assess sensorimotor and simple social skills

Types of Neurological Assessments:

Electroencephalograph (EEG) Place electrodes on the scalp that record activity

Computerized tomagraphy (CT)- Uses X-rays to take a photograph of the brain. 

Magnetice Resonance Imaging (MRI)-Magnet and radiowaves to take a detailed picture of the brain. 

Functional MRI (fMRI)- Tracks changes in oxygen to examine the activity in different parts of the brain.

Neuropsychological tests- Test learning, memory, language, motor, sensory skills

Positron Emission Tomography (PET)- Determines the rate of activity in different parts of the brain using radioactive substance that is injected into the bloodstream.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-Fourth Addition, Published by the American Psyciatric Association: A book/manual that includes most common mental disorders:

A description, criteria for diagnosis, treatment and research findings

5 Axes

- Classification system is a systematic way to describe a phenomenon

Axis 1: Clinical Disorders

Axis 2: Mental retardation or personality disorders

Axis 3: Medical conditions relevant to understanding or treating the child

Axis 4: Psychosocial problems

Axis 5: Level of functioning (1-100) 

Diagnosis, Define Reliability and Validity

Reliability: Consistency, Inter-rater reliability-whether different diagnosticians use the same category to describe a person's behavior

Validity: Utility of a tool, a diagnosis must provide us with more information (etiology, course, treatment), than we had before we defined the category.

Adult categories are used to diagnose children

Categorical Diagnoses
Relative inattention to gender, age, and environmental influence 

A number of relatively independent traits that all children posses to varying degrees

Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assesment- Child Behavior Checklist 

Using measures rather then meeting the threshold number of symptoms.

Addition of Temper Dysregulation Disorder w/ Dysphoia (instead of Bipolar)

Name changes (intellectual disability instead od mental retardation)

Risk syndromes

New disoders

Known information:

Theory

Hypotheses 

Focuses on an individual, describing the backgroung, present, and past life history, functioning and charachteristics of a a person. 

Strenght: Provides rich information about a rare  phenomena

Weakness: Reliability and Valididty 

Methods determine whether a relationship exists between variables

Correlational studies-Crucial to understanding variables that are operating in the environment

Helpful when ethical conderations preclude manipulation

Researchers prearrange and present different groups of subjects to different conditions and permits a judgment about causes of the findings

Hypothesis- A tentative explanation for behavior and attempts to answer the question how and why (begins as a hunch)

IV- The factor that is manipulated by the experimenters

DV- The factor or behavior that will presumably be affected by the manipulation 

A->B->A

(A) Measures are taken of behavior prior to intervention, (B) Intervention is carrried out while the behavior is measured in the identical way, (A) intervention is removed and there is a return to the same conditioneing as during baseline

Ethical problem: May be hesistant to return to baseline condition 

Define Qualatative Research and it's weakness

In-depth interviews, case studies, life histories, memoirs, diaries, letters etc

Weakness: small sample size, huge amounts of data, no real guidelines

Cross-sectional, longitudinal & sequential strategies

Define Cross-sectional research and Logitudinal resarch:

Include weakness:

Cross-sectional: Different grps. of subjects are observed at 1 time point (inexpensive)

Weakness: Difficult to examine developmental trajectory this way

Longitudinal: The same subjectts are evaluated over time

Weakness: Expense, time commitment, difficulty retaining subjects, repeated testing

Modes of treatment- Individual sessions which may be "talk-therapy" or play may be the primary mode of interaction

Play Therapy- Solution to the lesser verbal abilities of children.

Group Therapy- Opportunity for socialization and young people may feel more comfortable

Behavioral parent training- Teaches parents to manage consequences or contingencies to children's behavior.

Treatment in residential setting- Intervention for severe behavior problems.

Pharmacological treatment-medications are often used in combinations with other modes of treatment