B020881 - CONSTRUCTION AND VALIDATION OF INSTRUMENTS FOR THE EVALUATION OF EFFICACY OF PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERVENTION IN NEUROPSYCHOLOGY

Italian

This class is meant as a stimulus and guide for learning the basics of psychological and neuropsychological assessment.

Students can use the lecture notes that are available on Moodle. Further readings:
- Lezak, Howieson, Bigler, & Tranel (2012). Neuropsychological Assessment (5th Edition). Oxford University Press.
- Lord & Novick (2008). Statistical Theories of Mental Test Scores. Information Age Publishing.
- McDonald (1999). Test Theory: A Unified Treatment. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

- Present the methodological principles upon which the psychological tests are founded
- Put the students in a position to discriminate between the different types of tests and the goals for which they are used
- Introduce the themes of psychological and neuropsychological assessment
- Present the classic test theory, the statistical method of factor analysis, and the IRT models.

The course requires basic knowledge of statistical analysis applied to psychology.

Knowledge and understanding:
Frontal lessons.

Applied knowledge and understanding: Classroom exercises and exercises to be performed independently with the software R.

Autonomy of judgment:
Critical discussion of scientific papers that are part of the syllabus.

Communicative Skills:
Interpretation of the output of the software R; development of skills for presenting the results of an empirical investigation in a written or oral communication.

Learning ability:
Frontal lessons.

Total teaching hours: 63

classroom teaching: 40 hours
supervised lab: 23 hours

Knowledge and understanding:
Written examination consisting of multiple choice questions.

Applied knowledge and understanding:
Intermediate tests where students will discuss scientific papers and / or will present actual or simulated psychological data analyses.

Autonomy of judgment:
Interpretation, during the examination, of the scientific papers discussed in class.

Communicative Skills:
Discussion of scientific papers and the results of the validation of psychological tests based on actual or simulated data.

Learning ability:
The basic knowledge provided in the course is preliminary to further studies on the issues of psychological and neuropsychological assessment.

Overview of neurological disorders.
The basic concepts of neuropsychological assessment.
The problem of neuropsychological deficit measurement.
The specificity of the procedures of neuropsychological assessment.
The interpretation of the outcome of a neuropsychological evaluation.
The methodologies used to evaluate the effectiveness of psychological intervention in neuropsychology.
The neuropsychological assessment in single case studies.
Controlled randomized trials.
Measures the magnitude of the effect.
The classic tests theory.
The factor analysis.
The path analysis.
The uni-factorial and multifactorial model.
Factor extraction techniques.
Determination of the number of factors.
Factor rotation.
Principal components analysis.
The standard error of measurement.
The standard error of estimation.
Reliability.
Item Analysis.
Factor scores.
The different forms of validity.
IRT models.
Parameter estimation.
Specific objectivity and statistical sufficiency.
Interpretation of the parameters of the IRT models.
Goodness of fit.
Item information function, test information function.
Advantages of IRT models.
Examples of validation of psychometric tests.