Schemas and temperament as risk factors for emotional disability

This critical review of narrative methods of personality assessment highlights their value in understanding unique aspects of personality functioning of children and adolescents in the context of school psychology. The use of narratives for assessment is based on constructivist theories emphasizing the role of the person and the social group in assigning meaning to reality through the use of storytelling processes. Narrative analysis is linked to thematic apperception techniques within a personological paradigm of assessment that attends to the internal and interpersonal processes underlying personality development. A comprehensive framework is described to guide the use of narrative methods of assessing children and adolescents. Research is proposed to validate these methods further as an integral aspect of personality assessment in school psychology. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Narrative assessment is a qualitative method of analysis used by a number of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences to understand the implicit meaning of personal accounts, life histories, autobiographies, and other forms of narrative discourse. This article focuses on the application by school psychologists of narrative analysis in personality assessment. A critical discussion is provided for (1) the theoretical and research literature that form the basis for an understanding of narrative methods, (2) the application of narrative approaches to personality assessment with children and adolescents, (3) a framework for analysis and interpretation of data derived from narratives, and (4) future directions in research on narrative assessment. Theoretical and Research Bases of Narrative AssessmentAn understanding of the use of narratives in psychology is derived from theoretical premises in related disciplines, including an interpretive approach to text analysis in the humanities, narrative conceptualizations of human knowledge, and personal-social constructivist movements in philosophy (Gergen, 1985;Polkinghorne, 1988). These major theoretical perspectives are discussed in terms of their influence on the application of narrative assessment methods in psychology. Narrative Psychology and Theories of KnowledgeNarrative psychology is based on a philosophy of human nature that emphasizes the individual's subjective interpretation of reality as part of an ongoing internal process that is personal yet shared within a social context (Crossley, 1996;Mancuso, 1996). This philosophical view assumes that individuals construct their own stories about life situations on the basis of their interpretation of past experiences, in relation to the social narratives of others, and according to culturally transmitted constructs of reality. This storytelling interaction between a person and the social and cultural environment provides a sense of identity, continuity, cohesiveness, and meaning to life experiences for the individual in the context of community (McAdams & Bowman, 2001).A psychological narrative perspective has its roots in the philosop...

Section: Theoretical and Research-based Narrative Interpretationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narrative methods of personality assessment in school psychology

Esquivel¹,

Flanagan²

2007

“…Children who have temperamental tendencies to experience negative emotional reactivity, an acknowledged risk factor, had schemas about self, others, and the world that were less complex, less accurate, and less organized (Bassan-Diamond, Teglasi, & Schmidt, 1995;Lohr, Teglasi, & French, 2004). Were we to fill in all the boxes in Figure 1 with details about a given individual, we would understand the person in context of a range of situations, as the context for evaluating any single variable, and of contexts that are internally represented in the form of mental models or schemas.…”

Section: Implications For Personality Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personality constructs and measures

Teglasi

Simcox

Kim

2007

Self Cite

A psychological construct, such as personality, is an abstraction that is not directly seen but inferred through observed regularities in cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses in various settings. Two assumptions give meaning to the idea of construct validity. First, constructs represent real phenomena that exist apart from the potential ways in which they are measured. Second, constructs have a causal relation to their measures (see D. Boorsboom, G.J. Mellenbergh, & J. van Heerden, 2004). According to these twin assumptions, variation in a construct such as personality or intelligence causes individual differences in responses to items on measures; it also accounts for performance in real life settings. An alternative perspective equates a construct with the operation used for its measurement (M. Friedman, 1991) without a presumption of causality. This article elaborates on the implications of different assumptions about measurement, operation-referenced and construct-referenced, for advancing the science and practice of psychology.

“…Socioemotional competencies are built on the temperamental foundation of self-regulation of attention and emotion (Eisenberg et al, 2005). Likewise, qualities of self-regulatory schemas of the personality, such as their accuracy, organization, and complexity, are linked to temperament (Bassan-Diamond, Teglasi, & Schmidt, 1995;Lohr, Teglasi, & French, 2004). These schema qualities are associated with mental health (Lohr et al, 2004) and with academic outcomes such as reading comprehension (Blankman, Teglasi, & Lawser, 2002).…”

Section: Social Emotional Variables and Personalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Likewise, qualities of self-regulatory schemas of the personality, such as their accuracy, organization, and complexity, are linked to temperament (Bassan-Diamond, Teglasi, & Schmidt, 1995;Lohr, Teglasi, & French, 2004). These schema qualities are associated with mental health (Lohr et al, 2004) and with academic outcomes such as reading comprehension (Blankman, Teglasi, & Lawser, 2002). Given the complexity of self-regulation, it seems reasonable to consider frameworks in which the various resources of self-regulation (e.g., temperamental assets, specific competencies, and more general personality organizations) are linked in the process of development and team up to influence functioning in specific contexts.…”

Section: Social Emotional Variables and Personalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction to the series—personality assessment: The whole and its parts

Teglasi

2007

Self Cite

How is information about personality integrated in a comprehensive assessment for children? This is the general issue addressed by this topical volume. The assessment of children's personality is complicated by incomplete frameworks for understanding how the plethora of socioemotional variables fit together within the construct of personality. Many challenging questions persist about how the variables subsumed within the personality rubric relate to each other in the course of development and about how they join together in day to day functioning. Questions also remain about how personality variables team up with other types of variables to explain adjustment in various contexts.Contributors to this volume focus on the integration of multiple variables within an assessment battery by delving into issues about the connection between personality constructs and measures, frameworks for integrating multiple measures, implications of sociocultural contexts, intricacies of specific performance measures of personality, and design of assessment procedures to serve therapeutic goals.