Heuristic principles and cognitive bias in decision making: Implications for assessment in school psychology

✍ Scribed by Joseph Davidow; Edward M. Levinson

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1993
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 757 KB
• Volume: 30
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0033-3085
• DOI: 10.1002/1520-6807(199310)30:4<351::aid-pits2310300410>3.0.co;2-x

✦ Synopsis

Research has indicated that the diagnoses and classification decisions made by professionals are often unreliable. People employ several heuristic strategies when making decisions under conditions of uncertainty. Use of these heuristics can have a detrimental effect on the decision-making process. This paper describes factors that may bias psychoeducational decision making and discusses three heuristic principles that affect decision making. The means by which school psychologists can be made aware of these heuristic principles and encouraged to consider them when making psychoeducational decisions are discussed. Other methods by which bias in the psychoeducational process can be reduced, including the use of statistical and actuarial-based assessment systems, the multitrait multimethod approach to multifactored assessment advanced by Gresham (1983), and direct instruction in reasoning and decision making are also discussed.