About Arrowhead Psychological & Behavioral Sciences, LLC
Arrowhead Psychological & Behavioral Sciences, LLC is a community based agency in Billings, Montana that provides neuropsychological evaluations for infants, children, adolescents, and adults; parent-child interaction assessments; and program evaluation services for social service and criminal justice programs
Neuropsychological Evaluations
The brain weighs only about three pounds, but it is the most important organ in the body when it comes to behavior, personality, thinking, learning and remembering. Neuropsychology is an interdisciplinary branch of psychology and neuroscience that aims to understand how the brain relates to behavior.
At Arrowhead Psychological & Behavioral Sciences, LLC staff provides evaluation and consultation for a range of problems and conditions that involve the brain and affect behavior. Dr. Brenda K. Roche has not only general clinical skills and knowledge of the broad range of mental health problems, but also expert knowledge and skills in neuropsychological testing and assessment.
Neuropsychological assessment can be a lengthy process that involves
one-on-one testing with a neuropsychologist or psychometrist and
allows for the evaluation of multiple domains of functioning,
including memory, language function, visual-spatial skills,
problem-solving/executive-functioning skills and general
intellectual skills.
A neuropsychological evaluation is used to obtain several types of information which may include, among others: 1) to find possible problems with brain functioning, 2) to help lead to a diagnosis, 3) to define brain-related strengths and challenges, 4) to guide treatment for personal, educational or vocational needs, and make relevant recommendations to other health care provider(s), or 5) to document possible changes in functioning over time. A neuropsychological evaluation typically involves assessment with a group of standardized tests that are sensitive to the effects of brain dysfunction. Therefore, neuropsychological assessment is a procedure with a unique purpose; it can be used to reveal or diagnose brain dysfunction when no structural brain abnormalities can be seen. Furthermore, when structural abnormalities have been found, neuropsychological assessment provides a way to determine what functions may be impaired because of the structural defects, and to determine the degree to which they may be impaired.
Parent-Child Interaction Assessments
A Parent-Child Interaction Assessment (PCI) is a comprehensive model for assessing the nature of the relationship between infants, toddlers, and their significant caregivers. This model is based on empirical research which confirms that both internal and external aspects of the relationship are important to understand in order to fully assess the functioning of the dyad. The internal aspect includes how the caregiver perceives, feels, and thinks about the child and their relationship; the external aspect includes the actual overt behaviors displayed by the dyad. Once these aspects are evaluated, the strengths and concerns about the relationship can be outlined so that an effective plan for intervention can be implemented. The PCI includes two components the Working Model of the Child interview (WMCI) and the Caregiver-Child Structured Interaction Procedure (Crowell).
This semi-structured interview is a means of eliciting the internal
aspects of the relationship by hearing the caregiver’s story of the
young child and his or her relationship with the child
(Zeanah & Benoit, 1993; Zeanah, Benoit, Barton, Regan,
Hirshberg, & Lipsitt, 1993).
Although the interview includes content themes, major areas
of importance go beyond content.
The narrative features, affective tones, and narrative
organization of the interview material all are used to infer
meaningful characteristics of the caregiver’s representation of the
child. Slight
modifications of the interview are made for various groups:
biological parents, foster parents, and significant caregivers who
are not parents. This
measure takes 60-90 minutes per child to administer.
Caregiver-Child Structured Interaction Procedure (Crowell)
This procedure provides a method of observing the external aspect of the relationship by assessing caregiver-child interactions (Crowell & Feldman, 1988; 1991; Crowell, Feldman & Ginsburg, 1988) in a clinical setting. This procedure involves a series of eight episodes designed to elicit behaviors that allow the clinician to focus on the relationship between a child and his or her caregiver in a setting that is unstructured enough to allow for “real-life” spontaneous interactions. This procedure requires 45 to 60 minutes per child to complete. The eight episodes include free-play, clean-up, a bubble blowing episode, four increasingly difficult problem-solving tasks, and a separation/reunion episode. These episodes allow the clinician to see how comfortable and familiar the dyad is with each other, how the dyad negotiates transitions, the dyad’s ability to solve problems together, their use of shared affect (positive and negative) to communicate, and comforting behaviors.