Psychological testing, also called psychological assessment, aims to establish an individual’s “present functioning” in terms of his/her mental health, personality, IQ, and other factors that make up a person’s psychological construct(Framingham, 2013). There are numerous psychological testing materials developed and established over time, and results derived from administering and interpreting these testing materials are useful in diagnosing psychological, emotional or behavioural difficulties of an individual for psychologists to use as a basis in developing a psychotherapy process that will effectively address the issue.
The “most widely-used intelligence test” (Blumel & Zembar, 2010) today is the Wechsler Scales, where the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale – 3rd Edition (WAIS – III) is included. Intelligence tests developed by Wechsler are founded on his theory that intelligence involves a variety of skills which should be measured based on a person’s intellectual performance instead intellectual quantity. As such, he divided intelligence into two major types of skills: verbal and performance, wherein general knowledge, language, reasoning, and memory skills are measured in the verbal scales, while performance scales seek to assess spatial, sequencing and problem-solving skills.
Compared to other cognitive tests, WAIS-III provides standard scores that make comparison across testings and ages possible. The test also yields a one number estimate of an individual’s cognitive functioning which is referred to as the Full Scale IQ. Differences between smaller numbers of estimates of verbal and visual-motor functioning that the test generate proved to be useful in detecting and diagnosing learning disabilities (Niolon, 2005). Understanding the test is crucial to verify if an individual’s psychological concern can be determined by the test. For instance, a person referred for memory problems can take this test to measure his/her working memory. In this domain, the person’s ability to attend to information, to hold and process it in memory, and to give a response can be determined. Comparison of the individual’s score against those who have taken the same test from the same age group that s/he belong to can either rule out or confirm the memory problems.
WAIS-III is administered to adults aged 16-89 and can take approximately 60 to 90 minutes to complete. This test is taken individually with an administrator present to give instructions. Composed of 14 subtests, each is given separately and starts from the easiest to the most difficult ones (“Wechsler adult intelligence scale”, 2013). Should an individual taking the test appears to be having some difficulties moving on from a subset, the administrator may choose to end the said subtest early. This kind of situation stresses out the necessity of having an administrator who comes from the field of psychology and has completed training in order to avoid compromising the scores that an individual who has reached his/her limit in taking the subset may get.
Three scores are derived from the tests, the Verbal IQ score and the Performance IQ which when summed and converted yield the Full Scale IQ. The verbal and performance scores come from the 14 subtests which have a mean of 10 and 3 as the standard deviation. All three scores are standardized with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15 in order for the test takers to be compared to others who belong to the same and different age. For example, a test taker who is 37 years old will be compared to others who are 35-44 year olds. Test takers with Full Scale scores higher than 130 are gifted, those with 120-129 are very high, and 110-119 are bright normal, while 90-109 are average and 70-84 are low average (“The Wechsler Intelligence Scales”, n.d.). Test takers with scores within 50-69 are said to have mild mental retardation, 35-49 moderate retardation, 20-34 severe retardation, and those below 20-25 have profound retardation.
These scores play a very important role for psychologists as they define the parameters of the treatment plan. The goals and objectives, as well as the duration of the psychotherapy process will be defined by the scores of the test. Each session should be documented properly for psychologists to assess the effectiveness of the therapy. Accurate documentation does not only provide a clear record of the psychotherapy session but helps the psychologists stick to the goals and objectives of the treatment plan (Wiger, 2013). Similarly, psychologists will be able to keep track of conflicting information provided by the client in each session and isolate the possible reasons and how they might affect the therapy. The BioPsychoSocial Template provides an effective opportunity to document therapy sessions efficiently. All necessary and observable information that should be recorded about the client are present in the template, as well as remarks from the psychologist. Using the template for therapy documentation will give psychologists concise and salient information regarding the client and what transpired in the session.
Psychological tests are administered by many professionals daily and results from these tests are “used in ways that significantly affect an individual and everyone else around” (Miller, McIntire, & Lovler, 211, p.5). Test results should be interpreted with caution and proper documentation should be applied in order for psychotherapy to succeed.
Reference List
Blumel, L.B. & Zembar, M.J. (20 July 2010). Measures of Intelligence. Education.com. Retrieved November 23, 2013, from http://www.education.com/reference/article/measures-intelligence/.
Framingham, J. (2011). Types of Psychological Testing. Psych Central. Retrieved on November 23, 2013, from http://psychcentral.com/lib/types-of-psychological-testing/0005924
Miller, L., McIntire, S., & Lovler, R. (2011). Foundations of Psychological Testing: A Practical Approach (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
Niolon, R. (2005). Introduction to the WAIS III. Resources for Students and Professionals. Retrieved November 23, 2013, from http://www.psychpage.com/learning/library/intell/wais_history.html.
The Wechsler Intelligence Scales (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.iupui.edu/~flip/wechsler.html.
Wechsler adult intelligence scale (2013). Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders. Retrieved from http://www.minddisorders.com/Py-Z/Wechsler-adult-intelligence-scale.html.
Wiger, D. E. (2012). The Psychotherapy Documentation Primer (3rd ed.). Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
