PSY 602 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Nomothetic, Information Processing, Discriminant

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 602
• Professor: Karen Milligan

Document Summary

Assessment of psychological disorders: assessment vs. Assessment - process of gathering information about an individual"s symptoms and factors that may aid in development and maintenance of the symptoms: idiographic individual. Diagnosis -- label given to a set of symptoms that tend to co-occur with one another: nomothetic shared characteristics. Validity does the test measure what it says it measures. Reliability able to produce the same result across time, rater, test. Assessment methods & tools: intake interview. Pros and cons: limitations of interviews. Selective information provided by the client, bias. Symptom questionnaires: self, parent, and teacher-report questionnaire about thoughts, feelings, behaviours, etc, standardized so that the individual"s responses can be compared to norms. Projective tests: when presented with ambiguous stimuli, individuals will interpret based on their current concerns and feelings, aligns with psychodynamic theories. Useful in uncovering the unconscious, material that may be difficult to talk about directly. Identify when behaviour does and does not occur ( setting events )