VIDEO ONLY: Dr. Whitney Graff Psy.D, ABPP, When Test Data Come Alive: Integrating Context, Function, and Observation in Child Assessment

Abstract: Psychological assessment of children and adolescents necessarily relies on structured measures, symptom inventories, and diagnostic frameworks. These tools provide valuable information, yet they are often asked to do more than they can, standing in for a deeper understanding of why a young person behaves as they do. The presentation introduces a functional contextualist approach to assessment that complements traditional testing methods by situating behavior within its developmental, relational, and environmental contexts. Moving away from treating test results as indicators of static traits, attendees will explore how symptoms manifest in different ways across settings and contexts (school, home, peer relationships, and the testing room itself). The presentation will highlight the testing process itself as a rich assessment context. Attendees will learn how clinically relevant behaviors, such as avoidance, distraction, emotion dysregulation, perfectionism, or disengagement, often emerge during testing sessions and can be thoughtfully observed, tested, and integrated into case conceptualization. Finally, by identifying common functional themes that cut across symptom presentations and diagnoses, testing psychologists can better understand comorbidity, clarify the meaning of test results, and generate recommendations that are precise, individualized, and clinically useful. Objectives: 1. Articulate how a functional contextualist perspective can be applied to pediatric psychological assessment to understand behavior as context-dependent and functionally meaningful. 2. Identify and assess clinically relevant behaviors that emerge during the testing process itself, and integrate these observations with standardized test data to enhance case conceptualization. 3. Apply an integrated, contextual case formulation to generate individualized, coherent, and practically useful assessment conclusions