Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
concern the global evaluation of the subject's autonomy and more specific measures assess
the change of the psychic function with respect to the technical aid used.
8.6.2.3 What a Psychologist Should Do in Promoting a User/Client Request
To conclude this section on the psychologist's role in the ATA process, we remark, in a
guidelines style, what a clinical psychologist should do in promoting a user/client request.
• Be an expert in the relational ield that is able to listen, receive, and understand
others.
• Be aware of the idiographic approach and sensitive to individual differences in
psychological functioning.
• Have expertise and dynamic comprehension of the bio-psycho-social variables of
functioning, so that the hyphen between “bio-,” “psycho-,” and “social” will not be
a separator but a connector. The perspective is that of interaction, something less
valued by the ICF model.
• Have a developmental perspective, not only when working with children but also
with adults and elderly people. This allows him/her to appreciate the change
always present in life (decremental or incremental; continuous or discontinuous).
• Be able to actively involve the subject in the psychological assessment process with
the aim of improving his or her awareness of the personal factors that mediate the
choice and use of the technical aid.
• Be able to work with, depending on the subject, the different people that belong to
his or her life, respecting their roles and competencies.
• Have clinical competencies: evaluation and planning of the intervention. He or
she should be able to conduct an early assessment but also be able to evaluate the
course of the process and to test its efficacy. We consider as intervention the process
of the choice of a specific aid, done together with and for a specific person with a
disability, which has the specific features of psychological-personal -functioning.
• Be able to use psychological tests and conduct a psychological assessment through
the use of tests in a multimethod way (using not just one instrument but several to
ensure the incremental validity of the evaluation to appreciate the psychological
functioning of the subject). Working in a team that includes the neuropsycholo-
gist, clinical psychologists with such competencies will orient their evaluation to
the axis of psychological functioning with regard to relational functioning and
emotional-affective functioning, being aware of their strong connection.
8.7 Psychologist “Know Thyself”: Psychologist and
Professional's Representations of the Disabled
Users/Clients and Assistive Technologies
The perspective that takes into account human complexity and its mutability better than
others is the biopsychosocial one. The possibility of carrying out this perspective, usefully
combining the contribution of professionals working in the team, needs to acknowledge
