Abstract
The appraisal of personality and psychopathology through nonverbal methodologies is distinguished by its widespread practice among psychologists, in spite of a dearth of empirically supported tests and procedures. As part of the assessment process, the vast majority of professionals use projective drawings (e.g., Camara, Nathan, & Puente, 2000) and implicitly observe nonverbal behaviors during interviews and test sessions (e.g., facial expressions, motor behaviors, and problem-solving approaches). At the same time, these approaches are often interpreted informally and unsystematically and relegated to a secondary status behind norm-referenced self-report and other-report procedures in arriving at diagnostic and treatment-related inferences. In this chapter, some historical perspectives are recounted and a framework offered for thinking about nonverbal tests within the domain of personality and psychopathology assessment. Several approaches to nonverbal assessment of personality are reviewed, including some traditional and enduring techniques as well as some newer pioneering efforts. Finally, areas of promising research are described that may suggest a new era in the use of nonverbal personality assessment procedures to augment language-based measures.
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Wasserman, J.D. (2003). Nonverbal Assessment of Personality and Psychopathology. In: McCallum, R.S. (eds) Handbook of Nonverbal Assessment. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0153-4_14
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