Exam 4: Classification and Assessment of Abnormal Behavior

A psychologist wants to obtain a measure of children's attention spans under quiet conditions. She arranges for a group of children to meet individually with a research assistant who reads each child a list of numbers and then asks the child to repeat the numbers in reverse order. A week later the children repeat this task. The psychologist finds that the scores that each child received at week one and at week two tend to be very similar. She concludes that this test has high

An actuarial procedure of interpretation of psychological tests relies on

Projective tests

According to labeling theory, a psychiatric diagnosis serves to

Ray is suspicious and has the unrelenting delusion that agents of a foreign government are following him with the intention of killing him. If administered the MMPI-2 you expect that Ray would have a high score on the scale measuring

What is the benefit of personality tests in psychological assessment?

In reliability research the statistic that is used to measure agreement between clinicians is known as __________.

Behavioral __________ systems focus on the frequency of specific behavioral events during assessment.

Psychological __________ is the process of gathering information in an attempt to understand a patient.

One empirical finding about the MMPI-2 scales is that an individual's scores change over time. This could be an indication

One advantage of psychophysiological tests is that

Reactivity refers to the

One advantage of a dimensional system of classification is that it allows scientists to

Carol is asked to complete a questionnaire made up of more than 500 true-false items. What test is she taking?

Alice has been experiencing a number of symptoms of anxiety for several months. A psychologist decides to assess her symptoms by using a behavioral coding system. What is Alice likely to be asked to do?

A psychologist is treating a patient with an anxiety disorder and wants to measure the patient's anxiety while discussing upcoming feared events as a way of assessing the patient's progress in therapy. The psychologist measures heart rate before, during, and after her patient's discussion. She finds that discussion of the upcoming feared event is associated with increased heart rate, and concludes that her patient has not yet made enough progress in treatment. Discuss the grounds on which such a conclusion would be criticized, and describe what else the psychologist might do to measure her patient's progress.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association is also called the DSM-IV-TR. The IV refers to the 4th edition. What does the TR stand for?

Compare and contrast a dimensional classification system with a categorical classification system, such as the current DSM-IV.

One theory to explain ataques de nervios is that it may be a culturally sanctioned way of expressing

After reviewing the manual for scoring the MMPI-2, Elizabeth decides that the scoring can best be described as