PSY537 Online Tutorial @ 9-10am Wednesday 13/3/24

- Many different domains of intelligence and mental functioning: e.g., working memory, oral
language, non-verbal, etc.
- Need to try use our psychological tests to obtain more info about our clients
- The idea of the Intelligence-Achievement gap led to the ‘Boston Processing Approach’ or the
‘Boston School’ approach:
o This was not a good thing, because the Boston Approach was trying to say ‘if you
observe these occasional behaviours that someone engages in, you can thus
conclude they have a deficit in a particular area’
o They were essentially trying to say certain occasional observations were valid, but
research over 40yrs has shown occasional observations are not valid measures. You
can’t observe one thing a person does and infer that you know something about
their intellectual functioning!
- We want and need repeated observations, of repeated behaviours, to infer something
meaningful about their intellectual functioning.
o Ignore any attempts to put weight into an ‘observation’
o E.g., 60% of training programs in the US still teach people about the Rorschach – the
only thing this actually accurately diagnoses is Schizophrenia, and if you need a
Rorschach to diagnose Schizophrenia as a psychologist, you’re in the wrong job ;)
- Observations could be used to generate hypotheses about a diagnosis:
o Sure, we can observe someone in a playground and may think ‘hmmm, that’s a bit
unusual, most kids don’t do that’ >>> we might then generate a hypothesis, e.g., ‘I
wonder if that means they have so and so, a Learning Disorder, Intellectual
impairment, Developmental Disorder, etc.’ >>> then you would need to TEST that
hypothesis (rather than merely relying on a few observations in the playground, for
example).
- Tim believes generally you would NOT take notes on child’s behaviours during WISC,
because most things you do observe you should immediately realise that it doesn’t
necessarily mean anything outside of the testing context, and it can be a waste of time
o e.g., child can’t help but answer your question before you’ve finished > generate
hypothesis: ‘I wonder if this child is impulsive’; ‘I wonder if they have ADHD’
o e.g., child immediately slumping every time you place something written in front of
them > may generate hypothesis: ‘hmmmm maybe they don’t like reading, I wonder
why, I wonder if they have a Reading Disorder?’ > Then you may choose to test this
properly by assessing the child.
- 95% OF THE TIME OCCASIONAL OBSERVATIONS CAN BE/ARE MEANINGLESS!!!
o So, place little weight in observations – of course you can still write things down, but
broadly.
o Research shows people tend to act differently when in the presence of a
psychologist with a clipboard, for example, thus observations of behaviours made in
the testing context are not valid. They may be anxious, shy, eager to please etc,
which could impact their observable behaviours.
- Always ask yourself – what is the substantive difference of opinion; what is the evidence
pushing us one way or the other, and what’s the actual evidence?
- WISC-V, MATRIX REASONING question – what is the answer and why to the hardest Item 32?
o Firstly, be reassured that any 6yo who gets the hardest item 32 right, except by
chance, is clearly very intelligent; but also remember this test goes up to 16yo, thus
 very few 16yos will get it right, which is what you want – you want most people to
get most questions right, then for some responses you want very few people to get
it right.
- FEEDBACK TO CHILDREN DURING WISC TESTING ETC – What’s the correct thing to do?
o Tim acknowledges it is tricky because we’re trying to avoid reinforcing or indicating
correctness vs incorrectness, e.g., don’t want to be saying ‘yeah that’s right, that’s
right’ then silence when they get the answer incorrect because you’ll be reinforcing
their responses
o Aim instead for ‘aha’, ‘okay’, ‘right’; e.g., after the sample items we’re trying to say
‘aha, that’s right – you know how to do them’; Avoid making truly positive
comments or feedback, so try get into practice of saying ‘aha, okay’ etc.
o Try not to ‘teach’ people the answers as they go along
o As per Rhi’s suggestion in a previous lecture, if you’re going to praise something
(e.g., to build rapport), praise the child’s effort, attention, listening – not the content
or their correct responses; e.g., say things like “I can see you’re listening well”, “I can
tell you’re really paying attention” vs. “That’s great!” or “That was a good response!”
- EFA and CFA on WISC-V
o WISC-IV had 4 factors, WISC-V has 5 factors - Differences between the four vs five
Indexes, and FRI correlates w FSIQ at 1.00, which indicates something was wrong w
the WISC-V CFA!
o WISC-V decided there were 5 factors without running an EFA based on the WPSSI
having 5 factors, then confirmed these five factors with a CFA.
o Why did they do this? It’s a ‘complete lie’. At Pearson’s Head Office in Texas there
are tonnes of staff there including 20 psychometricians – thus it’s utterly implausible
they didn’t put the data through an EFA, this is actually inconceivable
o You have to remember Pearson are a marketing company as well as a testing
company, so the WISC-V having 5 factors is akin to them offering ‘5 steak knives with
your new test!!’ :p aka “Buy our new product!”
o You also cannot say that one factor solely assesses one skill.
o Hear hoof beats, think horses! Not zebras.
o We have top-down hypotheses, this is what we actually do – generate hypotheses
then test them to determine a child’s diagnosis
o Overall the WISC-IV is a better test but unfortunately it’s out of date so we can no
longer use it, we must use the most recent edition of the test, i.e., the WISC-V. In
actual fact every subtest on the WISC-V is better than the WISC-IV, and we can deal
with its downfalls by not interpreting VSI and FRI as something different, instead we
consider it an Index regarding dealing with non-verbal material.
- Children generally don’t have deficits in their memory system, it’s usually because they have
a language disorder and didn’t understand information in the first place, or they have an
attentional problem and weren’t concentrating, or have a Reading Disorder and couldn’t
read the material
o BUT if their input systems are all functioning fine, there’s no such thing as sudden
amnesia or developmental memory problems (this does actually exist in rare cases
with kids who have bilateral brain damage due to epilepsy)
o If you wanted to really measure memory, you wouldn’t take one task from the
Woodcock Johnson test, you’d use all items/tasks
 o Never try to interpret one score as telling you everything you need to know about a
particular skill! E.g., Tim doesn’t know why ‘screening’ tests exist – if you want to
assess something, test it and assess it properly!
- TOP-DOWN: there’s common developmental disorders, we know these, we know what to
look for and test for, so we gather data to test our hypotheses.
o None of this stuff is incredibly complicated, it’s all quite straightforward. One thing
psychologists do is overcomplicate what’s actually a fairly straightforward case of
decision-making, e.g., they get too specific w the data, we should instead look at it
as BIG PICTURE DATA!
o PLUS BIG PICTURE HYPOTHESES ABOUT WHAT TO EXPECT! When you try get too
clever/complicated that’s when you start to make mistakes (A person has got to
know his limitations)
- Prasad will provide information on pre-morbid functioning assessment in Adult Assessment
course. Very difficult to assess this in children and adolescents because they change so
rapidly.
o In adults, it’s easier to assess, e.g., if you have a head injury your reading vocabulary
often remains intact; if you are able to read or know a particular word after a head
injury it must have been in your vocabulary prior to your injury.