A couple of months ago Newsweek magazine published an article questioning the science of mental health services, and in particular, clinical psychology. The article was based on an opinion piece published in the journal of the Association for Psychological Science, in which a team of clinical scientists promoted a new accreditation system for clinical psychology doctoral program, which would ensure that future clinical psychologists are trained as scientists who base their clinical decisions on scientific evidence rather than perceived ‘clinical expertise,’ ideology, or tradition. Some of you may have assumed that therapists practice within specific empirically supported guidelines.  Unfortunately this is not the case. Clinical psychologists, social workers, and other therapists have been notoriously resistant, and often hostile, to the adoption of new intervention modalities in response to scientific advances. In fact, many clinicians use therapeutic modalities that simply have no empirical support. Read More

Association for Psychological Science week

This past weekend I attended the Annual Convention of the Association for Psychological Science (APS). I attended several presentations on studies examining various aspects of child development and child disorders I decided to dedicate this week to several exciting preliminary studies presented at the convention.

Guest blogger and speech pathologist Nicole Hess recently commented on the use of gestures in pre-verbal babies. Specifically, she addressed the myth that using signing with preverbal babies affects the speech development of these children. At the APS Convention, a group of researchers from the University of Virginia presented a study that examined the association between gesture imitation and language development in Autism. Read More