Cobos, P. L. , Flores, A. , López, F. J. , Godoy, A. & González-Martín, E.
University of Malaga
Previous studies have shown that clinical psychologists’ causal theories about DSM-IV disorders determine the weight of diagnostic criteria in the diagnosis of such disorders. Specifically, the presence or absence of causally central symptoms responsible for the appearance of many other symptoms have a greater impact on the diagnosis of DSM-IV disorders than causally peripheral symptoms that are the ultimate effects of other symp-toms or are not connected at all. This has been shown to occur even with symptoms that, according to DSM-IV, should be equally considered for diagnosis purposes. Our study provides further evidence of clinicians’ use of causal theories of DSM-IV disorders in several ways. First, we show that what matters is not only which symptoms are present or absent, but also the temporal order in which symptoms appear in a client. When the temporal order is consistent with a well known causal theory of a disorder, clinicians spend less time reading sentences reporting the symptoms than when the temporal order is inconsistent with the causal theory. This result shows that subtle causal reasoning processes are also at work when clinicians face a reading comprehension task. Second, we show that the temporal order of symptoms together with more explicit information about causal links between them affects clinicians’ diagnostic judgements as well as judgements on treatment efficacy and treatment selection. Finally, when inconsistent clinical reports were read, clinicians took longer to make all these judgements than when consistent clinical reports were given. Altogether, our results provide strong and converging evidence that clinical psychologists use causal theories of DSM-IV disorders when processing the information given through clinical reports.