| Abstract: | The benefits and boundaries of microcomputer use within clinical psychology are discussed. Psychological software is conceptualized along a continuum of how completely the duties of the clinician are assumed. Record keeping, test scoring, interviewing, test interpretation, integrated report writing, and expert decision-making functions are reviewed for their utility and limitations in the present generation of microcomputer hardware and software. Advantages of personal computer use are most clear in those applications that save time for the psychologist. Other applications that are supposed to substitute for the psychologist in a decision-making, diagnostic, or therapeutic capacity may be more advanced in appearance than in actuality. Software simulation of the expert psychologist remains rudimentary; serious information processing and conceptual obstacles impede future development. Proposed guidelines would increase programmer and provider accountability for the consequences of computer use and would limit the domain of current psychological software to adjunctive capacities. An argument is made for "visible" software in which diagnostic logic and decision rules are explicitly displayed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
