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Method, Judgement, and Clinical Reasoning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 February 2012

Tony Ward*
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne. [email protected]
*
*Address for correspondence: Dr Tony Ward, Department of Criminology, University of Melbourne, Parkville VIC 3052, Australia.
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Abstract

Researchers have tended to take one of two mutually exclusive positions concerning the nature and status of clinical decision-making. On the one hand, clinicians are urged to be more rigorous and analytical when assessing a client, to disregard their intuitions and instead utilise explicit rules and algorithms. On the other hand, they are counselled to regard their “gut feelings” as valuable sources of knowledge about clients. As a way of reconciling these two perspectives, it is important to acknowledge that clinical psychologists are confronted with a wide range of assessment and clinical tasks that vary in their degree of structure. Therefore, in order to effectively manage the diverse tasks they face during a typical assessment, they need to possess a wide range of cognitive skills. These skills, and their associated cognitive tasks, will span the cognitive continuum from the intuitive to the analytical poles (Hammond, 1996).

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

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