ABSTRACT
The assessment of thinking problems in children requires a clear conceptual definition of thinking disturbance. It then requires a careful understanding of the role developmental factors play in the manifestation of the thought processes covered under the term thought disturbance. Alternative methods of assessing thought disorder can then be reviewed in an effort to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages each presents. These can be evaluated both in principle, as a function of the nature of the phenomenon, and as they relate to the capabilities and characteristics of different age groups. In this chapter we attempt to examine each of these issues. We then attempt to present some descriptive data concerning psychometric manifestations of thinking disturbance in a sample of psychiatrically hospitalized children. Finally, we present a case example of a child for whom psychometrically measurable thinking disturbance was found to be a predictor of the eventual emergence of a more severe psychiatric disorder.
Kleiger (1999) has comprehensively reviewed the problems that arise in the attempt to assess disordered thinking. These include the distinction between the more traditional notion of thought disorder and that of communication problems or discourse failures (Andreason, 1982; Harvey, 1983; Docherty, 2005); differentiating positive and negative manifestations of thought disorder (Andreason, 1982, 1984a, 1984b); and the implications of unifactorial versus multifactorial, or dichotomous versus continuous, models of thought disorder. Klieger (1999) observes that, despite the general agreement that disordered thinking exists along a 411
