culture

Paediatric Cognitive Neuropsychology

Introduction to neurodevelopment

Black, J.E. (1998). How a child builds its brain: Some lessons from animal studies of neural plasticity. Preventive Medicine, 27, 168-171.

Assessment using the NEPSY-II

Stinnett, T.A., Oehler-Stinnett, J., Fuqua, D.R. & Palmer, L.S. (2002). Examination of the Underlying Structure of the Nepsy: A Developmental Neuropsychological Assessment.  Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 20, 66-82.

Attention/deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Mahone, E.M., Crocetti, D., Ranta, M.E., Gaddis, A., Cataldo, M., Slifer, K.J., Denckla, M.B. & Mostofsky, S.H. (2011). A Preliminary Neuroimaging Study of Preschool Children with ADHD. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 25 (6), 1009–1028.

Autism & Pervasive Developmental Disorders

The trouble with autism: Delays in early identification and diagnosis
Associate Professor Cheryl Dissanayake
   

Saitoh, O., Karns, C.M. & Courchesne, E. (2001). Development of the hippocampal formation from 2 to 42 years old: MRI evidence of smaller area dentate in autism. Brain, 124, 1317-1324.

Learning Disorders

Widmann, A., Schröger, E., Tervaniemi, M., Pakarinen, S. & Kujala, T. (2012). Mapping symbols to sounds: electrophysiological correlates of the impaired reading process in dyslexia. Frontiers in Language Sciences, 3.

Oppositional Defiant & Conduct disorders

Dick,D.M., Viken, R.J., Kaprio, J., Pulkkinen, L. & Rose, R.J. (2005).Understanding the Covariation Among Childhood Externalizing Symptoms: Genetic and Environmental

Influences on Conduct Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and Oppositional Defiant Disorder Symptoms, Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 33,219-229.

Childhood Epilepsy

Ackermann, S.  & Van Toorn, R. (2011). Managing first-time seizures and epilepsy in

Children. CME, 29, 142-148.

Traumatic Brain Injury

Understanding and managing traumatic brain injury
Professor Jennie Ponsford

Resilience of people with traumatic brain injury and their carers Emeritus Professor Roger Rees   

Can psychological interventions be adapted for people with moderate to severe traumatic brain injury?
Dr Dana Wong. Dr Adam McKay and Dr Ming-Yun Hsieh

Ethical behaviour intervention for clients with a TBI: When is it OK to intervene?
Dr Brooke Froud-Cummins and Associate Professor Malcolm Hopwood

Savage, R.C. (2012). The Developing Brain after TBI: Predicting Long Term Deficits and Services for Children, Adolescents and Young Adults. North American Brain Injury Society. Retrieved 20 June 2012 from http://www.internationalbrain.org/?q=node/112

General texts

Anderson, V., Northam, E., Hendy, J. & Wrennall, J. (2001). Developmental neuropsychology: A Clinical Approach. Hove: Psychology Press.

Appleton, R. & Baldwin, T. (Eds.) (1998). Management of Brain-Injured Children. New York: Oxford University Press.

Baron, S. (2004). Neuropsychological Evaluation of the Child. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gillberg, C. (2003). Clinical Child Neuropsychiatry. Cambridge: Cambridge University press.

Johnson, M. H. (2005). Developmental cognitive neuroscience: An introduction, 2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell.

Panteliadis, C.P. & Korinthenberg, R. (2005). Paediatric Neurology: Theory and Practice. New York: Thieme Verlag.

Helping troubled children: Seven things you should know about the origins of mental health disorders
Professor Mark Dadds
  

The care team approach to helping troubled children
Christine Miller

Using play to help troubled children in the school setting
Dr Deborah Truneckova and Professor Linda L. Viney

Body image: Is it just for girls?
Assistant Professor Vivienne Lewis

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SAPI

Adams, B., van de Vijver, F., de Bruin G.B. Identity in South Africa: Examining self-descriptions across ethnic groups

Development of the South African Personality Inventory

Exploring the Personality Structure in the 11 Languages in South Africa

Meiring, D. (2011, June). Exploring the cross-cultural application of social desirability within the SAPI project. In F. J. R. van de Vijver (Chair), Personality theory and assessment: Recent advances. Symposium at the regional conference of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, Istanbul, Turkey.

Nel, J. A., Valchev, V. H., Rothmann, S., Van de Vijver, F. J. R., Meiring, D., & De Bruin, G. P. (in press). Exploring the personality structure in the 11 languages of South Africa. Journal of Personality. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.2011.00751.x

Nel, J.A. (2008). Uncovering Personality dimensions in 11 different language groups in South Africa: An Exploratory Study. Unpublished PhD dissertation. North-West University, Potchefstroom.

Valchev, V. H., Van de Vijver, F. J. R., Nel, J. A., Rothmann, S., Meiring, D., & De Bruin, G. P. (2011). Implicit personality conceptions of the Nguni cultural-linguistic groups of South Africa. Cross-Cultural Research, 45, 235-266. doi:10.1177/1069397111402462

Valchev, V. H., Nel, J. A., Van de Vijver, F. J. R., Meiring, D., De Bruin, G. P., & Rothmann, S. (in press). Similarities and differences in implicit personality concepts across ethno-cultural groups in South Africa. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.

Valchev, V. H., Van de Vijver, F. J. R., Nel, J. A., Rothmann, S., Meiring, D., & De Bruin, G. P. (2012). The use of traits and contextual information in free personality descriptions of ethno-cultural groups in South Africa. Manuscript submitted for publication.

CPAI-2

Cheung, F. M., Van de Vijver, F. J. R., & Leong, F. T. L. (2011). Toward a new approach to the study of personality in culture. American Psychologist, 66, 593-603.

Cheung, F. M. (2005). CPAI-2 English Description.

Link to CPAI-2 publications

The CPAI-2 as a cultirally relevant personality measure in dofferentiating among academic major groups

Cheung, F. M. (2006). CPAI-2 Personality Scale Description. Available from Fanny Cheung, Department of Psychology, Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Cheung, F. M. (2007). Indigenous personality correlates from the CPAI-2 profiles of Chinese psychiatric patients. World Cultural Psychiatry Research Review, 2, 114-117.

Cheung, F. M., Cheung, S. F., Leung, K., Ward, C. & Leong, F. (2003). The English version of the Chinese Personality Inventory. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 34, 433-452.

Cheung, F. M., Cheung, S., Zhang, J., Leung, K., Leong, F. & Yeh, K. H. (2008). Relevance of Openness as a personality dimension in Chinese culture: Aspects of its cultural relevance. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 39, 81-108.

Cheung, F. M., Fan, W., Cheung, S. F. & Leung, K. (2008). Standardization of the Cross-Cultural (Chinese) Personality Assessment Inventory for adolescents in Hong Kong: A combined emic-etic approach to personality assessment. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 40, 839-852.

Cheung, F. M., Fan, W. & To, C. (2007). The Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory as a culturally relevant personality measure in applied settings. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2, 74-89.

Cheung, F. M., Kwong, J. & Zhang, J. X. (2003). Clinical validation of the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI). Psychological Assessment, 15, 89-100.

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Cheung, F. M. & Leung, K. (1998). Indigenous personality measures: Chinese examples. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 29, 233-248.

Cheung, F. M., Leung, K., Fan, R. M., Song, W. Z., Zhang, J. X. & Zhang, J-P. (1996). Development of the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI). Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 27, 181-199.

Cheung, F. M., Leung, K., Zhang, J. X., Sun, H. F., Gan, Y. Q., Song, W. Z. & Xie, D. (2001). Indigenous Chinese personality constructs: Is the Five-Factor Model complete? Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 32, 407-433.

Cheung, G. M. & Rensvold, R. B. (2000). Assessing extreme and acquiescence response sets in cross-cultural research using structural equations modeling. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 31, 187-212.

Cheung, S. F., Cheung, F. M., Howard, R. & Lim, Y-H. (2006). Personality across the ethnic divide in Singapore: Are “Chinese traits” uniquely Chinese? Personality and Individual Differences, 41, 467-477.

Chapter 24: Projective Assessment of Adults and Children in South Africa

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Chapter 32: Qualitative approaches to career counselling

AUTHORS: M. Watson, M. McMahon

ABSTRACT: Sometimes viewed as a newcomer in the field of career psychology, qualitative career assessment has a long history that has been overshadowed by the dominant story of quantitative career assessment. This proposed book chapter explores the potential of qualitative career assessment to accommodate less tangible and therefore less measurable variables that may influence individual career development. Specifically, a qualitative approach to career assessment may be sensitive to variables such as culture, socio-economic background, barriers to career development and other contextual influences that have been less focused on in quantitative career assessment. The book chapter also considers the issue of complementarity between qualitative and quantitative career assessment from various international perspectives. This proposed chapter describes the development of a qualitative career assessment measure, My System of Career Influences (MSCI; McMahon, Patton & Watson, 2005a, b), which has been developed for use with adolescents in South Africa and Australia. The MSCI was developed according to guidelines suggested for qualitative career assessment by McMahon, Patton and Watson (2003). Subsequently, the MSCI has been translated for use with adolescents in The Netherlands, Iceland and Hong Kong. The chapter also describes the development of an adult version of the MSCI (McMahon, Watson & Patton, submitted a, b) which was trialled in Australia, England and South Africa. The chapter concludes with an overview of recent research using the MSCI on diverse South African population groups of adolescents and adults.

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Chapter 31: The IAC approach to assessment: A family consultation model of child assessment

AUTHOR: Z. Amod

ABSTRACT: Innovative assessment procedures which take into account contextual factors such as language, culture, education, socio-economic status and recent educational policy developments are needed in South Africa.  In the democratic South Africa, both Education White Paper 6 (2001) and Curriculum 2005 call for assessment practices that are less expert-driven, non-deficit focused and linked to curriculum support.  The Initial Assessment Consultation (IAC) approach, which is the focus of this chapter, encompasses and addresses such aims.  This shared problem-solving approach to child assessment has at its core a focus on collaboration with parents and caregivers as well as significant others such as teachers, with the purpose of facilitating learning and the empowerment of clients.  The approach is based on a sound philosophical and theoretical foundation and is a radical departure from the belief that assessment and intervention are discrete clinical procedures.  The IAC approach to child assessment, which represents a paradigm shift in assessment practice, was initially developed by Adelman and Taylor (1979) at the Fernald Institute at the University of California to address prevailing criticisms of conventional assessment procedures.  Over the last two decades the IAC family participation and consultation model of assessment has been adapted and implemented at the University of the Witwatersrand.  Research has supported the usefulness of this holistic and egalitarian form of assessment which mirrors the more democratic environment of post-apartheid South Africa with its strong endorsement of human rights, sensitive cross-cultural differences and its changing educational policies on assessment practice (Amod, 2003; Amod, Skuy, Sonderup and Fridjhon, 2000; Dangor, 1983; Manala, 2001; Skuy, Westaway and Hickson, 1989; Sonderup, 1998).  The post-modernistic IAC model of assessment which emphasizes interpersonal, intrapersonal and environmental transactional factors in assessment has also been perceived positively by post-graduate students who have been trained in this approach at the University of the Witwatersrand (Dangor, 1983; Warburton, 2008).

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Chapter 30: The ImPACT Neurocognitive Screening Test

AUTHORS: A. Edwards, V. Whitefield, S. Radloff

ABSTRACT: The recent development of computerized neurocognitive screening programmes has revolutionized medical management in the sports concussion arena where there is a need for mass testing of athletes, and repeat follow up testing of the concussed athlete to monitor recovery and facilitate safe return-to-play decisions.  Automated programmes of this type have the facility for more accurate evaluation on timed tasks than paper-and-pencil testing, are time and cost effective in that group testing can be undertaken, and multiple randomized versions of the tasks reduce the problem of practice effects on repeated test occasions.  In South Africa, the ImPACT test (Immediate Post Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing) that was developed within a research context at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, has been employed for clinical and research purposes since 2003, and is the only test of its type registered with the Health Professional Council of South Africa (HPCSA) for clinical use in this country.  This chapter reviews research data derived using the ImPACT test in respect of players of contact sport from school through to the professional level that attests to the clinical sensitivity of this test in the identification of subtle neurocognitive deficit in association with participation in the contact sport of rugby.  In addition, available South African normative indications in respect of the test are presented and discussed.  Finally, the potential to use the ImPACT test to facilitate medical management and increase safety within other contexts is discussed, such as screening of aviation personnel (pilots and ground control employees) on a regular basis to identify the onset of intellectual dysfunction that might have sinister consequences.

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Chapter 29: Using computerised and Internet-based testing in South Africa

AUTHOR: N. Tredoux

ABSTRACT: South Africa was an early adopter of computerised tests, with the earliest testing systems being developed in the late 1970’s. Initially computerised testing systems were developed by state-funded organisations, with some funding from the private sector. As a result of political changes in South Africa, financial support for research and development in Psychometrics in statutory organisations decreased. Psychometrics, and specifically computerised testing, was then advanced by various private commercial interests, with increasing involvement from foreign test publishers. With the development of the World Wide Web and the availability of broadband connectivity, delivery of tests and reports across the Internet became a reality.  Publishers were concerned about piracy of content and cheating by respondents who were doing the tests unsupervised.  The International Test Commission drew up guidelines for computer-based and internet-delivered testing, and these were adapted to the existing South African legislative framework and ethical guidelines for psychologist. A legal battle ensued, resulting in the repeated withdrawal and re-adopting of the South African guidelines. The main point of contention was whether or not unsupervised Internet-based testing should be allowed.  This legal battle eventually led to changes in legislation.  This chapter will discuss the regulatory framework as it currently stands.  The risks attached to different types of computerised implentations of tests will be considered, taking into account the rights of the respondent, the psychometric impact of computerisation, and the exposure for the practitioner to charges of possible misconduct. A proposal for best practice in South Africa will be formulated.

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Chapter 28: Ethical Perspectives in Assessment

AUTHOR: N. Coetzee

ABSTRACT: Psychological assessment practices in South Africa are informed by several governing bodies. Firstly, there are the codes of conduct proposed by the International Test Commission and the American Psychological Association (APA). Secondly, practitioners must adhere to statutory control in the form of the Health Professions Act 56 of 1974. Thirdly, practitioners working in organizational and institutional contexts soon discover that they must also deal with two other forms of important legislation, namely the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (1997) and the Employment Equity Act (1998). Add to this the fact that South Africa is in dire need of appropriate measures of assessment, and it soon becomes clear that practicing psychological assessment could approximate a walk through a mine-field. The aim of this chapter, however, is not to add to the sense of confusion South African practitioners currently experience, but to provide them with detailed step-by-step guidelines on how to interpret and integrate the ethical codes proposed by the International Test Commission, the APA and the Health Professions Act 56 of 1974. Discussions and guidelines on how to interpret the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (1997) and the Employment Equity Act (1998) when conducting psychological assessment within the organizational context will also be provided. Research findings of relevant South African studies on psychological assessment will be incorporated throughout the text to illustrate that, despite all the hindrances experienced by practitioners, the ethical use of psychological assessment is possible.

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Chapter 27: The use of the Rorschach Inkblot Test in South Africa

This chapter will focus on the Comprehensive Exner System, into which all of the empirically defensible features of other, earlier approaches were merged. Even though the basis of the System has been in place for many years, research has been ongoing, also in South Africa. The Rorschach is an ideal instrument for exploring cross-cultural differences, because, unlike verbal or more structured tests, it involves culture-free stimuli. Various authors have concluded that it is a universally applicable and cross-culturally relevant instrument. In South Africa appropriate guidelines and norms have nevertheless not been developed, although some efforts have been made in this direction. Cultural influences on the administration and on response coding as well as the impact of language have been explored, at least to some extent. Some of the available studies such as those by Aronstam (2004), Moletsane and Eloff (2006), and Taylor and Dick (11997) can be seen as important in this regard. Various ongoing doctoral studies, in which the Rorschach is used as a measuring instrument, are also promising in terms of the future use of this test in the South African context. Rorschach testing constitutes a multifaceted method of data collection, and can be seen as a meaningful adjunct to a well-selected battery of tests where the understanding of an individual is important, be it for clinical, forensic or research purposes. The Rorschach is currently being used in South Africa in all of these settings, and knowledge of the strengths and disadvantages of using this test can be of considerable benefit to a clinician working in any of these areas. Intensive and long-term basic training, as well as ongoing more in depth training is crucial, if this test has to be of real use, adding significant information to that gleaned from other measuring instruments.

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