This paper presents comments on the article by D. Westen and J. Weinberger, which stated that '...science can be viewed as the history of confirmatory biases" (p. 609). This comment's authors prefer an alternative formulation: The history of science can be viewed as a constant and largely successful struggle to overcome confirmatory biases.…

An earlier study found that psychology interns who experienced patient suicides reported stress levels on the Impact of Event Scale higher than those found with professional clinicians who had patient suicides. The present study is a replication of the earlier study but with a much larger sample and an attempt to assess a broader spectrum of…

A large majority of graduates of university clinical training programs will not enter careers of research and scholarship but will instead enter professional practice. This fact has several implications for such training programs. The basis of professional education is disciplined knowledge. The body of knowledge and technique that comprises…

A growing number of psychologists seem to be involving themselves in independent psychological practice. Consistent with this trend, Division 42 (Independent Practice) of the American Psychological Association (APA) was developed. Division 42 has grown considerably in recent years, with a membership of over 5,000 psychologists. While psychologists…

Presentence evaluations conducted by psychologists and psychiatrists (clinicians) and correctional counselors (caseworkers) were subjected to multiple regression analyses in order to specify the relative contribution of inmate characteristics (offense severity and recidivism probability) and decision-maker response biases to sentencing…

Reviews the convergences and divergences between counseling and clinical psychology in terms of history, roles/functions, training conferences and experiences, work settings, and the future. Concludes that both specialties are converging in a number of ways, and discusses implications. (JAC)

Investigated diagnostic policies for hyperactivity used by (N=16) experienced clinical psychologists. Individual analyses were made on each clinician's set of diagnoses of children described in terms of 19 cues. Clinicians' diagnoses were intercorrelated but substantial individual differences existed. Suggests little professional consensus on the…

This paper presents comments on the article by D. Westen and J. Weinberger , which criticized academic clinical psychologists for being cynical about clinical judgment and clinical practice. In the authors' view, it seems unlikely that more than a few academic clinical psychologists believe that they have little to learn from clinical practice or…

Background: Mental health problems are known to be hard to recognize in people with intellectual disabilities. One factor that may contribute to this is the diagnostic overshadowing bias, which describes the tendency of the clinicians to overlook symptoms of mental health problems in this client group and attribute them to being part of…

This study involved the assessment of three psychology interns' ability to predict re-incarceration based on the use of clinical judgement. Three psychology interns in an APA-accredited internship were given training on how to use clinical judgement in predicting future incarceration on the part of youth incarcerated in a juvenile correctional…

Though directed primarily to graduate psychology students, this revised and expanded edition is intended to assist everyone involved in patient care. The manual attempts to provide practical and easily understandable guidelines which can be used for each step in the provision of psychological services. Instead of documenting every possible…

The predicted decline in usefulness and emphasis of projective techniques was analyzed from several different perspectives including the academic community, members of the American Psychological Association (APA) Division 12, internship centers, the applied clinical setting, and private practitioners. In addition, an extensive review of empirical,…

Most clinical training programs attempt to produce psychologists who are both skilled research scientists and practitioners. This scientist-practitioner or Boulder Model, named for the 1950 conference on clinical psychology held in Boulder, Colorado, has been the subject of much scholarly debate. A study was undertaken to examine the career goals…

This study examined what psychology students know about clinical psychology as most students with declared majors in psychology state that they have career plans to work in applied psychology. A five-item questionnaire was administered to 162 undergraduates in three introductory and upper level psychology courses. The questionnaire asked students…

The interview process was studied to uncover the relationship of expertise in psychotherapy to the likelihood of accurate diagnosis. Experience and training affect the number of diagnostic questions clinicians ask as compared to personal, family, social, occupational, and history questions; and this in turn affects the accuracy of the diagnoses…