The Kraepelin Count method is very well known, in demand and informative for diagnostic psychologists. About its occurrence, the research procedure and the results that it allows you to get, will be discussed later.
Emil Kraepelin: A Study of Attention and Mental Performance
A well-known German psychiatrist, a researcher of most of the mental illnesses and practitioners in this direction, E. Kraepelin proposed this technique in 1895. Initially, it was intended to study the quality of mental activity: performance, fatigue and ability to train. The method "Counting according to Kraepelin" then represented a series of numbers that over a certain period of time had to be added in the mind.
Since then, the test has undergone modifications and modifications. In particular, G. Schulte and N. Kurochkin were engaged in this. Series were added in the performance of actions, as well as the subtraction operation, which made it possible to study the time of switching attention between individual stages of testing and mathematical actions.
A pathopsychological study using the test revealed some differences in the performance of tasks by a he althy person and those suffering from neurosis, organic brain damage and schizophrenia. Now the technique is used in the practice of school psychology and other areas of work with he althy people, as well as in psychiatry.
Emil Kraepelin - the creator of the nosological concept in psychiatry, the largest scientist of his time, thanks to whom science knows about the distinctive features, causes and mechanisms of most mental illnesses.
Kraepelin Score method: what is it aimed at
Today, the technique has a fairly wide range of applications. It is used not only to study the will in the process of performing mental tasks, but also to determine the quality of attention - its switchability, stability - as well as the pace of mental activity.
The "Kraepelin Counting" technique is designed to work with subjects older than their early teens. As a result, the psychologist has the opportunity to build a graph of the stability of attention and the number of errors at each stage of work and draw conclusions about the causes of possible violations.
Stimulus material and research process
Psychodiagnostic test is a pairwise rows of numbers (8) that need to be added or subtracted, depending on the stage of the study. The numbers are simple, accessible to the mental operations of a person who has reached adolescenceage.
Work begins at the command of the researcher. A person tries to add / subtract as many numbers as possible in the allotted time (30 seconds) and write down the result under each of the pairs. After the time has elapsed, the execution ends and a point is placed at the place where the subject stopped. After completing one series of operations, immediately proceed to the next. In total, testing takes up to 5 minutes.
Processing and interpretation
After the study, qualitative and quantitative processing of the results is carried out. The quantitative indicator is compared with the average for the group and conclusions are drawn about the difference in this indicator. This result is the speed of work (the number of calculations performed) and the number of errors made at each stage.
This is visually demonstrated when building a graph of the work performed, where the abscissa axis is the number of the time interval, the ordinate axis is the number of correctly performed operations. Also here, the number of mistakes made is marked with conventional signs (shaded columns).
Qualitative processing of the results takes this schedule into account. It can be of four types, depending on which they draw conclusions about the causes of violations in work:
1. It is characterized by minor changes at all stages. It is further divided into subtypes:
- high performance in all parameters at all time intervals - conditional "norm";
- speed of execution is high, but there are many errors, which indicates the anxiety of the subject andthe desire to complete the task as quickly as possible to the detriment of accuracy or poor stability of attention and the development of self-control;
- reverse process - execution speed is low, but with a minimum number of errors (desire to perform correctly at the expense of speed, anxiety, inert temperament type);
- poor scores on both parameters (unfavorable result, requires additional examinations).
2. A type of graph with a marked decrease in speed, an increase in errors, or both. This indicates exhaustion of attention, fatigue. Reasons:
- low level of development of voluntary attention;
- general human asthenia (physical and mental);
- organic disorders in the brain and CNS functionality.
3. Zigzag chart: uneven work productivity with a different number of errors at all stages. This indicates a nervous state of the subject, a pronounced lability of the nervous system.
4. Increasing speed indicators and reducing the number of errors at each next stage of testing. Such a schedule is typical for people with slow, inhibited attention, slow inclusion and arbitrariness in the initial stages of work. It is also associated with the type of temperament.
In addition, there are common causes that can lead to an unfavorable result. This is the low interest of the subject in the very process of work and its results, insufficient mastery of counting operations, the statefatigue.
