Practical course (EX)
Objectives
At the end of the course students will learn:
- Methods, techniques and tools for collecting anamnestic data during the clinical interview.
- How to write a clear and complete anamnesis.
- The use of complementary tools for collecting information useful for conceptualizing the clinical case.
Syllabus
The course aims to illustrate the assessment practices based on the anamnestic features of clinical subjects. The general criterion of the course is inspired by the rules identified by an international project of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) called “Research Domain Criteria (RDoC): Toward a new classification framework for research on Mental Disorders.” This framework is enveloped by proposing patients a variable number of cognitive-affective tests aimed to understand their functioning conditions of both the Central Nervous System and the Autonomic System.
The aim of the course is allowing students to learn the techniques and identify any residual capacities of cognitive functions such as: attention, memory, intelligence, ability to inhibit visuo-spatial stimuli, etc. Together with the cognitive assessment, tools for assessing emotional components will be proposed. Furthermore, recent theoretical-experimental evidences have shown the role of stimuli’s presentation in subliminal form capable of overcoming the patient’s difficulty to express his emotional states. Techniques for the administration of tests will be presented subliminally.
The Implicit Association Test (IAT) will be further described, a tool capable of evaluating the association of a linguistic lemma with a concept for the evaluation of prejudice and fake beliefs.
Finally, a task aimed at evaluating interpersonal metacognitive skills and theory of mind through computerized stimuli deriving from the Happè test will be presented.
The whole results of these tests will determine a profile that will form the informative basis of the therapist who, on this data, accompanied by the clinical interview techniques dealt in another course, will allow the formulation of a categorical or dimensional diagnosis.
The exercises will be carried out in the classroom through examples starting from the description of clinical cases.
Exam
The assessment will consist of a written test on the topics covered in class and the performance of ongoing tests proposed during the lesson. Active participation in the moments of comparison will contribute to the final assessment.
Bibliography
- Arese Lucini F. A., Del Ferraro G., Sigmancde M., Maksea H.A. (2019) How the Brain Transitions from Conscious to Subliminal Perception. Neuroscience, 411, 280-290.
- NIMH – National Institute of Mental Health – RESEARCH DOMAIN CRITERIA (RDOC) PROJECT:
- Working Memory: Workshop Proceedings (Bethesda, Md – July 11-13, 2010)
- Cognitive Systems: Workshop Proceedings (Rockville, MD – October 23-25, 2011)
- Social Processes: Workshop Proceedings (Rockville, MD – February 27-28, 2012)
- Arousal and Regulatory Systems: Workshop Proceedings (Rockville, MD – June 24-26, 2012).
- Livingston L.A., Shah P., White S.J., Happé F. (2021) Further developing the Frith-Happé animations: A quicker, more objective, and web-based test of theory of mind for autistic and neurotypical adults. Autism Research. 2021 Sep;14(9):1905-1912. doi: 10.1002/aur.2575. Epub 2021 Jul 10. PMID: 34245112.
- Sato W., Kochiyama T., Minemoto K., Sawada R., Fushiki T. (2019) Amygdala activation during unconscious visual processing of food, Nature Scientific Reports, 9:7277.
