Announcements

1
Announcements

• Grading Scale now posted on website
• Updated grades w/ Hmwrk 2 on website
• Research Reflection Report due by Friday!
• Email TA questions by noon on Thurs.

2
Psychology in the Real World
3
Pseudoscience in Practice

• Why do some clinicians use pseudoscientific
  methods?
• New treatments/assessments use marketing that
  overstates their effectiveness
• Why do they not see that they are invalid
  ineffective?

4
Learning from Experience

• Experienced clinicians are not better at clinical
  judgments than
• Less experienced clinicians
• Graduate students
• Trained lay judges
• Why is it so hard to learn from clinical
  experience?
• Faulty cognitive processes
• Inaccurate feedback

5
Cognitive Processes

• Biases beliefs or preconceptions that adversely
  influence clinicians interpretations of
  available data
• Confirmatory
• Race, social class, gender, age, labeling
• Hindsight

6
Cognitive Processes

• Heuristics simple rules or shortcuts that
  describe how clinicians make judgments, treatment
  decisions or both
• Availability heuristic the role of memory in
  judgmental error

7
Feedback in Clinical Practice

• Most clinicians dont receive any feedback
• When they do receive feedback, its often
  misleading
• Patients agree with incorrect interpretations

8
Summary

• Clinicians use pseudoscientific methods in part
  because they have not learned that they do not
  work
• Cognitive processes feedback errors
• Clinicians should not use an assessment
  instrument or treatment method solely because it
  seems to work in clinical practice

9
Summary

• Clinicians also need to be aware of the research
  on clinical judgment
• Do admissions criteria to graduate programs need
  to change?
• Admit only those scientifically minded?