A Cognitive-Behavior Modification Approach to Assessment

Abstract

Although one may disagree with Shapiro and Ravenette’s evaluation of the various tests cited, their quote does sensitize us to the need to develop more explicit ways of assessing our client’s affects, cognitions, and volitions. The present chapter conveys some preliminary attempts at developing this assessment armamentarium, which follow from a cognitive-behavioral treatment approach. Specifically, the present chapter has two purposes. The first is to examine various assessment strategies that have been employed to study psychological deficits. This analysis indicates some shortcomings and an alternative, namely a cognitive-functional analysis approach. The second purpose of the chapter is to describe specific techniques that can be employed to assess more directly the client’s cognitions. Let’s begin with an examination of the current assessment and research strategies.

Psychiatric patients suffer from a variety of disorders of affect, cognition, and volition. A large number, if not the majority, of papers published by psychologists do not deal with these phenomena. Instead, they report upon the performance, by psychiatric patients, of a variety of tasks which might be described, without much loss of accuracy, as puzzles and indoor games. Examples are such tests as the pursuit rotor, the mirror drawing test, the block design test, the Rorschach test and the Thematic Apperception Test.

—Shapiro and Ravenette, 1959