Types of Psychological Exams

Psychology, the study of the mind, is a much more complex discipline than many people realize. Psychological researchers and practitioners engage in extensive study and experimentation to uncover the intricate workings of the mind in hopes that they can help people understand more about themselves, and improve the lives of those suffering from psychological disorders. Psychologists utilize several types of exams to systematically and objectively assess the minds of humans.

Neuropsychological

• Neuropsychological exams are designed to assess cognitive functioning in an individual. Trained neuropsychologists perform these exams to measure issues such as difficulty speaking, thinking or reasoning that may indicate the presence of an abnormality like a brain tumor, stroke or substance abuse that impairs the physiological functioning of the brain. Reaching up to eight hours in duration, these are often the lengthiest and most thorough of psychological assessments. The accuracy rate for the tests is in the 80 to 95 percent range. The Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Battery and the Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery are two of the most commonly performed neuropsychological exams.

Vocational

• The purpose of vocational exams is to help people match their interests, abilities and personality traits with the jobs where they are most likely to succeed. These evaluations are often administered to adolescents and young adults who are just starting out on their career paths, yet are also useful for people who are established in a career but thinking about pursuing a different field. Many of the exams use Holland codes, which categorize interests into six categories: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising and conventional. A person with a realistic personality is predicted to thrive best in an outdoors or hands-on occupation, an investigative personality in a scientific occupation, an artistic personality in a creative occupation, a social personality in an occupation like counseling or teaching, an enterprising personality in sales or management and a conventional personality in a clerical position.

Intelligence Quotient

• IQ tests measure an individual's potential to learn, as opposed to the information he already possesses. IQ tests measure a range of qualities in an individual including concentration, common sense, memory, spatial reasoning, verbal ability, numeric reasoning, social awareness and visual perception. The tests have received criticism for being culturally biased and are therefore not generally administered in schools. Well known IQ tests include the Stanford-Binet, Woodcock Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities-III, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-IV) and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-IV).

Personality

• In psychology, personality tests are used to identify a person's personality type and how her personality traits impact her behavior. One popular personality test is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), which consists of 550 statements to which a participant must respond, "true," "false," or "cannot say." The MMPI measures personality traits including masculinity/femininity, psychopathic deviation, depression, hysteria, paranoia and social introversion. The Rorschach Test, commonly referred to as the inkblot test, is another type of personality test consisting of a series of inkblots that the participant views and then provides a verbal account of what he sees. The Rorschach Test can identify qualities such as extroversion, introversion, emotional stability and repressed desires.

Diagnostic

• A diagnostic exam seeks to uncover if there is a specific psychological disorder that accounts for an individual's mental or behavioral issues. The nature of a diagnostic exam is dependent on the issues the patient needs addressed, but one always involve at least a mental status examination, a clinical interview, and one or more psychological tests. The psychological tests component may range from a short questionnaire to a lengthy personality evaluation. Diagnostic exams combine elements of other psychological exams including intelligence, neuropsychological and personality evaluations to provide patients with a formal diagnosis.