1. science
2. medicine
3. psychology and psychiatry

Sample Examination Questions
Psychology 435: Clinical
Dr. D. Wardell
First Mid-Term Examination:
1.
In the Doctor of Psychology (Psy. D.) Degree, graduate programs traditionally tended to emphasize:
A. strictly practice and training in clinical techniques.
B. knowledge of research.
C. production of research.
D. formal course work with elaborate clinical experience.
2.
Which of the following is NOT one of the four CPA ethical guidelines?
A. integrity in relationships
B. dignity of persons
C. confidentiality
D. responsibility to society
3.
Which of the following criticisms has not been applied to DSM-IV?
A. Too much attention has been paid to reliability thereby resulting in some oversimplifed concepts of disorder.
B. The revision came out too quickly after the appearance of DSM-III-R.
C. It fails to classify a sufficient number of behavior problems as mental disorders.
D. It imposes categorical decisions on people when a dimensional approach would be more powerful.
4.
The Boulder Model of Training for clinical psychology places primary emphasis upon preparing the clinician as a
A. practicing therapist.
B. community psychologist.
C. mental tester.
D. scientific psychologist.
5.
Which of the following psychological models is the least favored among American clinical psychologists currently?
A. psychodynamic
B. cognitive
C. humanistic
D. behavioral
6.
Self-efficacy involves beliefs that
A. a person can successfully perform a given activity.
B. bad outcomes are more likely than good outcomes for other persons.
C. good outcomes are more likely than bad outcomes for other persons.
D. a person will be rewarded for a given activity.
7.
Modern clinical psychology has been criticized for moving too far away from the scientist-practitioner model. Clearest evidence for reassertion of
science-based practice is
A. APA's new accreditation standards for clinical Ph.D. programs.
B. clinical Psy.D. programs seldom receive APA accreditation.
C. Professional schools of clinical psychology seldom receive APA accreditation.
D. McFall's "Manifesto for a Science of Clinical Psychology".
8.
Which of the following is not a requirement for registration as a psychologist in Alberta?
A. written and oral exams
B. a Doctoral degree
C. minimally, a Masters degree
D. 1500 - 2000 hours of supervised experience
9.
Lightner Witmer, sometimes considered the first clinical psychologist, worked with
A. adults with adjustment problems.
B. children with academic difficulties.
C. psychotic children.
D. married couples in therapy.
10.
The Scientist-Practitioner Model for psychologists differs from the model of most other professions because
A. it requires training in specific fields of science.
B. it does not require practical training in the field.
C. it is not founded on the apprenticeship model.
D. it requires a demonstration of skill in research techniques.
11.
Julian Rotter was one of the first psychologists to point out the importance of beliefs in learning and the occurrence of learned behavior. Which
of the following is NOT among variables that he proposed?
A. reinforcement value.
B. generalized expectancy.
C. self-efficacy.
D. locus of control.
12.
What is one of the major problems with the subjective distress definition of abnormal behavior?
A. Some disordered individuals do not report subjective distress.
B. It is too arbitrary.
C. Subjective distress is rarely encountered in clinical populations.
D. It overlaps completely with the statistical infrequency criterion.
Second Mid-Term Examination:
1.
When clinicians make mistaken inferences because they have relied too much on vivid past examples of a phenomenon that stand out in their
minds, they have been misled by the
A. illusory correlation.
B. Barnum effect.
C. availability bias.
D. base-rate problem.
2.
Paul Meehl's "sick-sick" and "me-too" fallacies refer, respectively, to
A. perceiving people unlike ourselves as "sick" and people like ourselves as not "sick".
B. comparing the behavior of clinical cases to the behavior of those close to us or to our own behavior.
C. excusing the behavior of clinical cases because we think that we understand it.
D. perceiving people like ourselves as "sick" and people unlike ourselves as not "sick".
3.
The "Flynn Effect" refers to the fact that
A. the standard deviation of IQ norms has been increasing by half a point a year.
B. average IQ scores have been increasing by half a point per year.
C. IQ test norms vary across seemingly similar English-speaking countries.
D. norms for personality tests need to be revised.
4.
Which of the following interpretive fallacies, as described by Meehl (1973), is best illustrated by the clinician who argues that a patient's psychotic
delusions are real to him/her, and therefore non-pathological?
A. Uncle George's pancakes fallacy
B. sick-sick fallacy
C. multiple Napoleons fallacy
D. me-too fallacy
5.
When diagnosis is unreliable, the researcher and clinician tend to try to avoid __________ and __________ errors, respectively.
A. positive, negative.
B. false negative, false positive.
C. negative, positive.
D. false positive, false negative.
6.
Assume that a clinician is 70% correct in being able to predict which former felons will commit new crimes after being paroled. (As a result, he
predicts 38% of felons will commit new crimes.) Also assume that the base rate for committing new crimes among a group of 1000 felons is 20%.
What is the specificity of this clinician’s predictions?
A. 36.8% (14/38)
B. 63.2% (24/38)
C. 30% (24/80)
D. 70% (56/80)
7.
The best definition for a projective test is a procedure that involves observing behaviour in a situation that
A. elicits maladaptive responses.
B. does not compel a particular response.
C. the client has never experienced before.
D. resembles real life.
8.
When a clinician believes there is a relationship between two variables (such as a test result and a trait) without observing the range of
possibilities on one or the other, this is called the
A. P.T. Barnum Effect.
B. incremental validity of the test.
C. conditional probability.
D. post hoc fallacy.
9.
In general, structured interviews:
A. are less reliable than unstructured ones.
B. are more reliable than unstructured ones.
C. provide the same information as unstructured ones.
D. do not rely on the memory of clients as much as unstructured interviews.
10.
Controlled observation usually involves:
A. setting up a situation in which to observe the client.
B. using unobtrusive measures.
C. observing the client in the home situation.
D. looking at behaviour in an institutional environment.
11.
The ‘twisted pear’ phenomenon suggests that vocational (and educational) predictions will have
A. higher positive predictive power compared to negative predictive power.
B. higher negative predictive power compared to positive predictive power.
C. higher percentage of false negatives than false positives.
D. none of these alternatives.
12.
When a clinician interprets assessment data as reflecting a range of possible implications about a person stemming largely from a psychodynamic
theory about the person and his or her responses to several assessment instruments, the clinician is probably viewing assessment data as a
A. determinant
B. correlate
C. sample
D. sign
Final Examination:
1.
The "Premack Principle" is expressed by
A. "Whistle while you work."
B. "First you work, then you play!"
C. "Hard work never hurt anyone."
D. "Work or you don't eat!"
2.
The discovery that "expressed emotionality" is an important factor in the relapse rate of schizophrenia suggests that
A. experiential factors are predisposing causes of schizophrenia.
B. experiential factors are primary causes of schizophrenia.
C. experiential factors affect the content of schizophrenic thought.
D. experiential factors are reinforcing causes of schizophrenia.
3.
Meta-analyses of the overall effectiveness of psychotherapy show
A. the average person who receives therapy is better off than 66% of the persons who do not.
B. the average person who received therapy is only slightly better off at the end of it than persons who do not.
C. the average person who receives therapy is better off than 90% of the persons who do not.
D. the average person who receives therapy is better off than 80% of the persons who do not.
4.
Billy is throwing a temper tantrum. The mother gives in and gives him what he wants. He stops throwing the tantrum. The mother's behavior is
being
A. extinguished.
B. punished.
C. negatively reinforced.
D. positively reinforced.
5.
On average (with and without maintenance medication), studies comparing schizophrenic patients who were discharged into high versus low
"expressed emotion" family environments have found that over nine months relapse rates were, respectively:
A. 50-60% versus 10 -20%.
B. 50-60% versus 0 - 10%.
C. 75-100% versus 15 - 25%.
D. 75-100% versus 50-60%.
6.
Which description below is the best example of the concept of transference?
A. A therapist who feels frustrated with himself/herself becomes angry with a patient's lack of progress.
B. A patient whose father was cold and distant becomes angry with a warm and caring therapist.
C. A very poor patient complains to the therapist about the cost of therapy.
D. An anxious patient describes his/her feelings about working in a seemingly low-stress job.
7.
The "Dodo Bird Verdict" refers to the fact that
A. the specific therapeutic tactic accounts for only a small proportion of outcome variance
B. all psychotherapies show poor results with many clinical problems
C. meta-analyses are only as good as the individual studies that are included
D. all psychotherapies show excellent results, irrespective of the nature of the clinical problem
8.
Which of the following therapeutic techniques best illustrates paradoxical intention?
A. A client who anxiously stutters in social situations is told to ignore the problem and behave as though he/she is entirely comfortable in such
situations.
B. A client who anxiously stutters in social situations is told to try to stutter in social situations.
C. A client who anxiously stutters in social situations role-plays this situation with the therapist, who stutters more noticeably than the client.
D. A client who anxiously stutters in social situations is instructed to substitute another symptom for stuttering.
9.
Problems with between groups and within groups experimental designs to evaluate psychotherapies are ________ are ________ respectively.
A. placebo effects, patient variables
B. situational/temporal, patient variables
C. patient variables, situational/temporal variables
D. situational/temporal variables, placebo effects
10.
“Time out’ is a behavioral procedure involving
A. aversion therapy.
B. counter-conditioning.
C. desensitisation.
D. negative reinforcement
11.
Reducing the prevalence of an illness by eliminating environmental conditions known to cause the illness is an example of
A. primary prevention.
B. secondary prevention.
C. tertiary prevention.
D. consultation
12.
In retrospect, Eysenck’s research on the outcome of psychotherapy provided:
A. a basis for reliably measuring the effectiveness of psychotherapy.
B. a catalyst for subsequent research in the area.
C. irrefutable evidence for deterioration effects in psychotherapy.
D. grounds for the selection of eclectic therapy over psychoanalysis.
KEY
First Midterm:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
D
C
C
D
C
A
D
B
B
C
C
A
Second Midterm:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
C
A
B
C
D
D
B
C
B
A
B
D
Final Examination:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
B
D
D
C
A
B
A
B
C
B
A
B