Behavioral Assessment and SORC Model

Behavioral Assessment

• Lack of attention (stimulus) can lead to a behavior, such as taking a pencil from another child, which results in attention (consequence).

SORC Model

• Used to conceptualize a client's problem, consisting of:
  • S: Stimulus or antecedent conditions that bring on a problem
  • O: Organismic variables related to the problem
  • R: Response or problematic behavior
  • C: Consequences of the problematic behavior

Behavioral Assessment as an Ongoing Process

• Ongoing process that occurs before, during, and after treatment
• Involves:
  • Diagnostic formulations (potential targets for intervention)
  • Evaluating patient's context or environment (social support, physical environment, skills)
  • Understanding client's behaviors and resources to develop a treatment plan

Treatment

• Collaboration between therapist and client
• Feedback leads to adjustment of treatment

Behavioral Interviews

• Allow therapist to assess client's "hope" for end results
• Ultimate outcomes: happiness, life satisfaction, making the world better

Evidence-Based Practice (EBP)

• Broader practice that includes treatment informed by various sources
• Society of Clinical Psychology developed criteria to evaluate different approaches to therapy/intervention treatments
• Referred to as "evidence-based treatments"

Features Common to Many Therapies

• Supportive factors: positive relationship, trust, and learning factors leading to behavioral change
• Relationship/Therapeutic Alliance: client-therapist relationship is important for successful psychotherapy
• Building Competency/Mastery: helping clients learn new things or alter their faulty ways of thinking

Controlled Performance Techniques

• Assessment procedure in which the clinician places individuals in a controlled performance situation and collects data on their reaction, performance, and behavior
• Approaches include:
  • Behavioral Avoidance Tasks
  • Fear Arousal Accompanying Responses

Psychophysiological Measures

• Used to assess CNS, autonomic nervous system, and skeletal motor activity
• Examples: Event Related Potentials (ERP's), Electroencephalographic activity (EEG)

Self-Monitoring

• Individuals observe and record their own behaviors, thoughts, and emotions
• Keep diaries, logs, or use devices like personal digital assistants (PDA's) or phones
• May lead to distortion or wrongful recordings, resistance

Variables Affecting Reliability of Observation

• Complexity of target behavior: more complex behaviors lead to greater unreliability of observation