Intellectual assessment, is conducted in order to assess various aspects of a person’s cognitive

abilities, which normally entails focusing on intelligence or components of intelligence and

attained levels of achievement with respect to cognitive abilities. These sorts of assessments aid
in making decisions regarding placements in school or employment positions, remedial training,
and determination of learning and developmental problems. The second type of assessment,
neuropsychological assessment, is also completed to assess intellectual and cognitive
functioning, but is done to determine the behavioral functioning, both deficits and strengths, of a
person who has a brain injury or is suspected of having some brain damage.

In 1939 Wechsler published the first specifically designed intelligence test for adults called the
Wechsler Bellevue Intelligence Scale, which was innovative in numerous respects. First, as
stated, it was designed specifically for adults and used the deviation IQ rather than the then-
current mental age calculation for IQ. In addition, he incorporated both verbal and performance
(i.e., nonverbal) tasks in the intelligence measure as he believed that both domains contributed to
overall intelligence. After developing the adult measure in 1939 (later versions of the Wechsler-
Bellevue were named the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale or WAIS), The newest version of
the WAIS, the WAIS-IV, has 10 subtests and 5 supplemental subtests (used to either substitute
for another subtest or to supplement information). Th e subtests include tests of verbal and
nonverbal intelligence and assess the four domains described earlier (i.e., verbal, perceptual
reasoning, working memory, and processing speed). Overall, although a new measure, initial
indications suggest that the WAIS-IV has as good as, if not better, reliability and validity as past
versions of the scale and shows a great deal of promise as a well-conceptualized and well-
developed measure of adult intelligence.

For many years, the Binet scales were the preferred tests. They underwent many revisions after
Binet’s work in 1905. Terman’s revision in 1916 was followed by the 1937 Revised Stanford-
Binet (Terman & Merrill, 1937). The 1960 version of the Stanford-Binet (Terman & Merrill,
1960) gave way to a 1972 test kit with revised norms, followed by the fourth edition of the scales
published in 1986 (Thorndike, Hagen, & Sattler, 1986). The most recent revision of the scale
appeared in 2003, the Stanford-Binet Fifth Edition, or SB-5 (Roid, 2003). The SB5 differs from
the Wechsler tests in some important ways, however. Rather than three separate tests for three
different age ranges, the SB5 covers the entire life span (ages 2–85+) as a single test. The
normative sample is like those of Wechsler tests in that it matches recent U.S. Census data on
important variables, but it additionally includes normative data from individuals with specific
relevant diagnoses, including learning disabilities, mental retardation, and ADHD. The SB5
features five, described briefly here:

• Fluid Reasoning—the ability to solve novel problems

• Knowledge—general information accumulated over time via personal experiences including

education, home, and environment

• Quantitative Reasoning—the ability to solve numerical problems

• Visual-Spatial Processing—the ability to analyze visually presented information, including

relationships between objects, spatial orientation, assembling pieces to make a whole, and
detecting visual patterns

• Working Memory—the ability to hold and transform information in short-term memory

Which is done either at the beginning of therapy to guide case formulation and treatment process,
or is conducted for the sole purpose of establishing a diagnosis and/or case description. These
kinds of assessments are also referred to as personality assessments, diagnostic assessments,
pretreatment assessments, or just plain psychological assessment

The MMPI/MMPI-2 is appropriate for adults aged 18 years and above and has been used for a
variety of purposes in addition to psychodiagnostic assessments such as initial screening for
psychopathology, personnel selection, marital therapy and marital suitability, and treatment
outcome studies ( Greene, 2000 ). It has a total 15 scales including 5 validity scales used to
assess test-taking attitudes and 10 clinical and personality-related scales. In addition, the MMPI-
2 has incorporated numerous additional clinically relevant scales.

Although the MMPI-2 has dominated the field as the omnibus inventory for clinical use,
Theodore Millon and colleagues have developed several clinical measures that are in use by
clinical psychologists for use with adult clinical samples, adolescent clinical samples, and adult
medical samples. The MCMI (the current version is known as the MCMI-III; Millon, 1997 ) is a
175-item measure of personality and psychopathology that is increasing in popularity. It was
designed diff erently than the MMPI-2, uses a different scoring system for determining whether
an individual exhibits psychopathology, and closely follows the DSM in the types of disorders
assessed.

However, especially in recent years, the most prominent structured interview has been the more
wideranging Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Disorders (SCID) (First, Gibbon, Spitzer,
Williams, & Benjamin, 1997; First, Spitzer, Gibbon, & Williams, 1997a, 1997c). The SCID was
created by some of the leading authors of recent editions of the DSM, and it is essentially a
comprehensive list of questions that directly ask about the specific symptoms of the many
disorders included in the DSM-IV. There are two versions of the SCID, one for Axis I disorders
and another for Axis II disorders.

A widely respected and used example of this type of test. The BDI-II is a self-report, pencil-and-
paper test that assesses depressive symptoms in adults and adolescents. The original BDI was
created by Aaron Beck, a leader in cognitive therapy of depression and other disorders, in the
1960s; the current revision was published in 1996. The BDI-II is very brief—only 21 items,
usually requiring 5 to 10 minutes to complete. Each item is a set of four statements regarding a
particular symptom of depression, listed in order of increasing severity. The clients choose the
one sentence in each set that best describes their personal experience during the previous 2
weeks (a time period chosen to match DSM-IV criteria). The 21 item scores are summed to
produce a total score, which reflects the client’s overall level of depression (Brantley, Dutton, &
Wood, 2004).

The Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID) and the Beck Depression Inventory-II
(BDI-II), are specifically identified as “highly recommended” instruments for diagnosing
depression in adults (Persons & Fresco, 2008)

Whereas objective tests and the content of interviews provide information on aspects of patients’
behavior that they have conscious awareness of, known as surface level of behavior, projective
techniques attempt to assess behavior that is at a deeper level and that the person may not be
aware of.

The Rorschach Inkblot Technique (RIT; Rorschach, 1921 ) was developed in the 1920s by Dr.
Hermann Rorschach, a Swiss physician who was interested in attempting to understand the
perceptual and psychological processes involved in organizing responses to ambiguous stimuli.
His belief was that responses to ambiguous inkblot stimuli refl ected perceptual organizational
principles and that there was a link between perception and personality ( Klopfer & Davidson,
1962 ) The RIT itself involves a set of 10 black-and-white or color bilaterally symmetrical ink
blots that are printed separately on cards that can be used for children and adults. The cards are
presented one at a time to a patient who is asked to report on what he or she believes the inkblot
image might be. The clinical psychologist administering the inkblot is to adhere to a strict
protocol in terms of instructions and presentation of the inkblots. The verbatim responses of the
patients are recorded as is the reaction time to the first response for each card

Although there are many projective tests using the sentence completion format, the Rotter
Incomplete Sentences Blank (RISB) tests are by far the most widely known and commonly used
(Sherry, Dahlen, & Holaday, 2004). The original RISB was published in 1950, with the most
recent revised edition (including High School, College, and Adult versions) appearing in 1992.
The RISB tests include 40 written sentence “stems” referring to various aspects of the client’s
life. Each stem is followed by a blank space in which the client completes the sentence.

Westen and colleagues have developed the Social Cognitions and Object Relations Scale
(SCORS; Westen, 1991 ) which provides scoring and interpretation based on object relations
theory. Used to understand the level of object relations in children or adults to aid in
psychotherapy, four categories or domains are tapped including the following:

1. Complexity of Object Relations (i.e., capacity to distinguish self from others, self and others
are stable and multidimensional, and awareness of motives and experiences in self and others).

2. Affect Tone of Relationships (ranging from benevolence to malevolence).

3. Capacity for Emotional Investment in Relationships (ranging from mutual caring to need
gratifi cation).

4. Understanding Social Causality (i.e., causal attributions regarding social behavior).

One other projective technique that is used with regularity involves drawing tasks, typically
drawings of people. The idea behind the drawing process is that the drawing that is produced will
access parts of the personality that are either not accessible with objective tests or will bypass the
defenses or resistances that a patient might have. It is thought that the task provides information
regarding the person’s inner predispositions, conflicts, and dynamics, as well as other aspects of
the person’s functioning that are not readily accessible to the patient or that can be tapped by
objective tests. Drawing tasks are quite popular with many clinicians and are reported to be easy
to administer, score, and interpret. They have been used as tools to interpret personality broadly
and to assess interpersonal relationships and are most frequently interpreted with an intuitive
approach ( Kahill, 1984 ). The most commonly used drawing tasks are the Draw-a-Person,
developed originally by Machover (1949 ) and revised and refi ned over the years, and the
House-Tree-Person drawing task ( Buck, 1948 ).