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Page last updated 8-29-2006.

email:Nigg@msu.edu; office phone: 353-5193; Office: 115-C Psychology Building
"Tim Goth-Owens" <gothowen@msu.edu>

Office Hours: One of us will generally be available for a few minutes after class. If more time is needed, make an apppointment as needed with one of the instructors.

Brief Description: This is a graduate level clinical psychology course covering the empirical and clinical bases of child clinical evaluation. It is open only to graduate students in the clinical psychology doctoral program at this time. Until this year the pre-requisites for this course were Psychology 828 (Assessment), 853 (Adult Psychopathology), 854 (Child Psychopathology), and the first year clinical practicum sequences. The course covers both introductory and advanced child assessment. Lab activities will be designed to enable students to gain basic skills with instruments. The course will cover introduction to major psychometric tests for children, basic psychometric principals in test evaluation, clinical interviewing, cognitive and behavioral assessment, report writing, consultation, and will attend to issues involved in considering multiple perspectives, working with diverse child and family populations, and considerations relevant to using psychometric tests in disadvantaged populations. The following is a syllabus and course plan.

Overview and Course Objectives. This course will provide basic knowledge of clinical psychological assessment instruments and techniques through lab activities. I will assume students have a working knowledge of psychopathology and familiarity with the DSM-IV diagnostic categories through prior or concurrent courses. Some students in the course will have already had introductory exposure to child clinical evaluation by seeing a child case in the clinical practicum, but this is not required. The purpose of this course is to provide introductory and advanced knowledge about the clinical assessment of children and families. Psychology 828, the companion course, covers assessment of adults. 829 will emphasize the assessment of children of school age (ages 6-12), however, we also will discuss evaluation of infants and toddlers and of adolescents. Objectives include familiarity with a wide range of assessment problems and instruments, fluency in the knowledge base necessary for clinical child and family evaluation (e.g., interview skills, psychometric properties, diagnostic utility, interpretive principals), beginning autonomy in selecting, interpreting, and writing up a test battery for a child case presenting for evaluation, and ability to make empirically supported choices in handling assessment with culturally diverse as well as underserved populations..

Course format, readings, and requirements. This course emphasizes 'textbook' guidelines on how to do child assessment and evaluation. It is expected that immersion in leading texts in this arena will equip students to approach initial autonomy in supervised child and family evaluations as they advance their clinical and research training on internship and beyond. Given that the texts may be expected to be useful throughout your clinical and research careers, you are encouraged to purchase the main texts. Supplemental readings are to be obtained on your own; you may borrow from the instructor if unable to obtain. Class will begin promply at 9:10 and end at 12:00, with a 10 min break at 10:10-10:20, and a 10 min break at 11:10-11:20 unless otherwise arranged by consensus with the class. Lab meetings will be negotiated and may replace or supplement class meeting time. Please be on time for class and on returning from breaks, to avoid disrupting your peers and/or breaking the train of thought of your instructor!

Required Texts

• Sattler, J.M. (2001). Assessment of Children: Cognitive Applications, 4th Edition. San Diego: Author. (5th edition may be out, if so, supplement not needed)
  
• Sattler, J.M. & Hoge, R. (2006). Assessment of Children: Behavioral and Clinical Applications: 5th Ed. San Diego: Author.
• Sattler, J.M. (2004). Assessment of Children: WISC-IV and WPPSI-III Supplement. San Diego: Author.
• Greenspan, S.I. (2003). The Clinical Interview of the Child (3rd Ed). Washington, D.C., American Psychiatric Press.
  

Recommended and Supplemental Texts

The following texts have been placed on reserve at the main library for you to consult. These books will serve well in your career and can be consulted to gain deeper or additional analysis of topics in the course. They will be placed on 24 hour reserve in the library for your use this semester. You may wish to review these books and decide which ones you find most useful to add to your personal library. 

        Briesmeister, J.M., & Schaefer, C.E. (Eds.). (1998). Handbook of Parent Training : Parents as Co-Therapists for Children's Behavior Problems (2nd Edition). New York: Wiley.
         Cuellar, I., & Paniagaua, F.A. (2000). Handbook of Multicultural Mental Health: Assessment and Treatment of Diverse Populations. San Diego: Academic Press.
        Dana, R.H. (2000). Handbook of Cross-Cultural and Multicultural Personality Assessment. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
        Fletcher, J.E., Strickland, T.L., & Reynolds, C.R. (Eds) (2000). Handbook of cross-cultural neuropsychology.
Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. xiii, 375 pp.
          Gibbs, J.T. & Huang, L.N. (2003). Children of color: Psychological interventions with culturally diverse youth. San Francisco, CA, US: Jossey-Bass. xxiv, 501 pp.
        Kamphaus, R.W., & Frick, P.J. (2002). Clinical Assessment of Child and Adolescent Personality and Behavior (2nd Ed). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
        Kaufman, A.S. (1994). Intelligent Testing with the WISC-III. New York: Wiley Publishers.
        Kemp, S.L., Kirk, U., & Korkman, M. (2001). Essentials of NEPSY Assessment. New York: Wiley.   
        Mash, E.J., & Terdal, L.G. (1997). Assessment of Childhood Disorders. New York: Guilford Press.
        Pennington, B.F. (1991). Diagnosing Learning Disorders. New York: Guilford Press.

In addition, Mash & Terdal will be available to borrow from the instructors (via Greta McVay) when two chapters from it are required reading later in the semester.        
In addition, a handful of key articles will be assigned for reading.  If you cannot obtain these on line, you may borrow a copy from one of the instructors.

1. Wood, J.M, et al (2002). Clinical assessment, Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 519-543.
2. APA. (2002). Ethical principals of psychologists and code of conduct. American Psychologist, 57, 1060-1073. You can also view an online copy or download PDF from APA. A short article highlighting changes from the prior ethics code may be helpful. NB: Everyone should have a copy of the ethical guidelines. Please obtain this if you do not have a copy.
3. Wood, J.M. et al (1996). The Comprehensive System for the Rorschach: A critical examination. Psychological Science, 7, 3-17 (with commentary and reply)
4. Sue, S. (1998).In search of cultural competence in psychotherapy and counseling. American Psychologist, 53, 440-448.
5. Rourke, B.P., Ahmad, S.A., Collins, D.W., Hayman-Abello, B.A., Hayman-Abello, S.E., & Warriner, E.M. (2002). Child clinical/pediatric neuropsychology: Some recent advances. In  In S.T. Fiske, D.L. Schacter, & C. Zahn-Waxler (Eds.), Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 309-339.
6. Carlson, G. (2005). Early Onset Bipolar Disorder: Clinical and Research Considerations. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 34, 333-343.
7.  Youngstrom, E.A., et al (2005). Toward an evidence-based assessment of pediatric bipolar disorder. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 34, 433-448.

Assignments

I. Reading. Required reading must be completed before class each week. The reading for this course is moderate, averaging 90 pages per week but exceeding 100 pages several times. This level of reading is necessary in order to provide sophisticated coverage of the extensive issues involved in professional clinical psychological evaluation of children.

II. "Lab" projects. You will complete the following outside or lab projects. # 1 through 4 are graded P/NP. As a class we will discuss possible substitutions for these projects and I am open to suggestions. However, these will be the default lab assignments if other arrangements are not agreed upon. It may be that we can make a live case a lab exercise for some students. If possible we will do a live case together using observational rooms in Sndyer Hall (I am still working on arranging this). We will adjust as clinic cases and observation cababilities enable.

1. Problem set: Reliability and validity. Due: 9/12. Grade yourself before handing it in. (Answer key link included in problem set, will be activated day before due date). 17 pts. Answer Key
   
2. WISC-IV competency demonstration. Review manual, scoring and administration guidelines. Practice WISC-IV with a peer colleague. Videotape an administer of the WISC-IV to a peer or a child. Obtain feedback on accuracy of administration AND SCORING using Sattler's guidelines (found in WISC-IV Supplement p. 32 and Appendix D1) by having a peer watch the tape and rate your administration and check your protocol scoring (you then do the same for your peer). Hand in completed checklist. You will then administer WISC-IV to an instructor (TGO) in a spot check of administration and scoring.  Those who have substantive prior experience administering the entire WISC-IV may bypass the first part of this assignment and proceed directly to administration to the instructor in a "check out" of their accuracy of administration.  GRADE: P/NP
   
3. Review manual and administer WIAT-II to a peer--hand in checklist. P/NP. Advanced students can demonstrate competence to instructor in office hours at their option and bypass assignment.
   
4. WISC-IV Write up. Write up and interpret WISC-IV results on basis of scores and guidelines given to you in class. Due: 10/20. 10 pts
   
5. Report Write up. Write up a full report on the basis of history and data provided in class. Grade: 20 points possible. Graded on basis of accuracy, clarity, appropriateness, use of principals outlined in class. Additional grading criteria will be supplied.

Grading
(tentative point assignments)

• Problem Set=17 pts
• Two P/NP assignments (lab # 2 and lab #3) handed in on time with satisfactory effort= 4 pts each (8 total)
• WISC-IV write-up--10 pts (Lab # 4)
  
• Report write up=20 points (Lab # 5)
  
• Final Exam = 45 points
• Total points possible=100.

• 4.0=94% or better
  
• 3.5=88% to 93.9%
• 3.0=81% to 87.9%
• 2.5=72.0% or better
• 2.0=61.0% or better

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