Associations between psychologists' thinking styles and accuracy on a diagnostic classification task

Contains fulltext : 103009.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)The present study investigated whether individual differences between psychologists in thinking styles are associated with accuracy in diagnostic classification. We asked novice and experienced clinicians to classify two clinical cases of clients with two co-occurring psychological disorders. No significant difference in diagnostic accuracy was found between the two groups, but when combining the data from novices and experienced psychologists accuracy was found to be negatively associated with certain decision making strategies and with a higher self-assessed ability and preference for a rational thinking style. Our results underscore the idea that it might be fruitful to look for explanations of differences in the accuracy of diagnostic judgments in individual differences between psychologists (such as in thinking styles or decision making strategies used), rather than in experience level.12 p

Bayesian Hierarchical Classes Analysis

Bayesian, hierarchical classes, Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation, Metropolis algorithm, psychiatric diagnosis, psychology of choice,

Theories of conduct disorder: a causal modelling analysis

Contains fulltext : 59261.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)Background: If a clinician has to make decisions on diagnosis and treatment, he or she is confronted with a variety of causal theories. In order to compare these theories a neutral terminology and notational system is needed. The Causal Modelling framework involving three levels of description – biological, cognitive and behavioural – has previously been used to compare causal accounts for dyslexia and autism. Method: In this article we present this framework and explore its application to four causal theories of conduct disorder. We discuss the problems we encountered in this application and evaluate both the framework and the theories of conduct disorder. Conclusions: It was possible to capture parts of the theories of conduct disorder in the Causal Modelling framework but a multi-model approach may be necessary for the alternative theories of conduct disorder we evaluate. The application of the framework helps to see the relationships among the various theories of aspects of conduct disorder and demonstrates the need for more explicitness in the causal theories