Glossary

Showing 11 terms.

Base rate Contemporary update

How common a condition is in the population being assessed. Base rates strongly affect how many positive screens are true positives.

See: Psychometrics: reliability, validity and screening accuracy

Behavioural activation Contemporary update

A treatment for depression that increases engagement in rewarding and valued activities to counter withdrawal.

See: The cognitive and cognitive-behavioural approach

Behavioural rehearsal Textbook concept

Practising a new behaviour, often through role play, before using it in real life.

See: The behavioural approach

Bias (in assessment) Textbook concept

Systematic distortion in how information is gathered or interpreted, for example through stereotypes or expectations.

See: Clinical interviewing and the mental status examination

Biofeedback Textbook concept

A technique that gives people real-time information about physiological processes such as heart rate or muscle tension so that they can learn to regulate them.

See: Behavioural observation, self-monitoring and checklists

Biological vulnerability Textbook concept

Inherited or acquired biological characteristics that increase the risk of developing a problem under stress.

See: Biopsychosocial formulation, Diathesis–stress and related explanatory models

Biomedical reductionism Original elaboration

The view that illness can be fully explained by physical and biological processes alone.

See: Foundations and early history

Biopsychosocial model Textbook concept

George Engel's 1977 model holding that health and illness result from interacting biological, psychological and social factors.

See: Biopsychosocial formulation, Recent history: from the Second World War to today, What is clinical psychology?

Boston Process Approach Textbook concept

A flexible neuropsychological approach that examines how a person arrives at answers, not just the final scores.

See: Cognitive, intellectual and neuropsychological assessment

Boulder model Textbook concept

The scientist-practitioner model of training endorsed at the 1949 Boulder conference.

See: Recent history: from the Second World War to today

Brain–behaviour relationships Textbook concept

The links between brain structure and function and a person's cognition, emotion and behaviour; the focus of clinical neuropsychology.

See: Areas of specialisation