The mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through one's thoughts, experience, and senses.
Knowledge and cognitive skills: Acquired skills that reflect an individual's ability to think. Cognitive skills include verbal and spatial abilities, concentration, memory, perception, reasoning, planning and organisation, flexible thinking, and problem solving.
- Introduction
Consistent and effective knowledge and cognitive skills must be demonstrated to undertake safe and competent clinical psychology practice. - Description of inherent requirement
Student demonstrates:
- The capacity to locate appropriate and relevant information
- The ability to process information relevant to practice
- The ability to integrate and implement knowledge in practice.
- Justification of inherent requirement
Satisfactory performance on placements requires identifying and accurately extracting and understanding information from a range of sources, which must also be applied appropriately. - Adjustments
Adjustments for knowledge or cognitive skills impairments must not compromise or impede student's ability to demonstrate the minimum acceptable level of knowledge and cognitive skill required to practice safely. - Exemplars:
- Ability to apply academic knowledge to practice during placements, for example through developing and testing hypotheses, developing treatment plans, and then conducting individual sessions for clients based on relevant information.
Literacy (language): This relates to the ability to acquire, understand, and apply information in a scholarly manner.
- Introduction
Competent literacy skills, in English, are essential to permit safe and effective practice of clinical psychology during placements. - Description of inherent requirement
Student demonstrates the ability to:
- Accurately acquire information and convey appropriate, effective messages, read, and comprehend a range of literature and information
- Understand and implement academic conventions to construct written text in a scholarly manner.
- Justification of inherent requirement
The ability to acquire information and to accurately convey messages is fundamental to ensure safe and effective assessment, treatment, and delivery of care. The ability to read, decode, interpret, and comprehend multiple sources of information is fundamental for safe and effective conduct during placements. - Adjustments
Adjustments to address literacy issues must not compromise the student's ability to demonstrate the minimum acceptable capacity to effectively acquire, comprehend, apply, and communicate accurate information. - Exemplars:
- Conveying a spoken message accurately and effectively in a clinical setting during placements
- Paraphrasing, summarising, and referencing in accordance with the American Psychological Association Publication Manual
- Producing accurate, concise, and clear documentation while on placement in the clinical setting which meets legal and professional requirements.
Numeracy: This relates to the ability to understand and work with numbers.
- Introduction
Competent and accurate numeracy skills are essential to provide safe and effective demonstration of clinical psychology practice skills. - Description of inherent requirement
Student demonstrates the ability to interpret and correctly apply numerical data, measurement and numerical criteria in the execution of clinical psychology practice while on placement. - Justification of inherent requirement
As clinical psychology practice relies in part on collecting data in a numerical form, for example psychometric assessments, students must be able to accurately record and manage numerical data and to interpret their findings. - Adjustments
Adjustments to address numeracy issues must not compromise the student's ability to demonstrate the minimum acceptable capacity to manage and interpret numerical data. - Exemplars:
- Accurately scoring and interpreting psychological test data while on placement.