Ashlee Petranovich- Clinical and School Psychology Internship (Murray State University) Week Two

Hello everyone! I hope that my blog post finds you well. My name is Ashlee Petranovich and I am currently in Murray, Kentucky attending Murray State University. While I am here on my internship I will be collaborating with four different programs that are focused on mental health, school safety, school psychology, and psychological assessments. These programs are indirectly or directly associated with the College of Education and Human Services at Murray state. The work that I will be completing in the next 7 weeks aligns with the following bullet points:

• Grant implementation experience through the MSU/WKEC Mental Health Providers Academy grant
• Counseling and assessment experience shadowing school psychology interns as they complete screening for and diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder in youth clients
• Assisting faculty with literature reviews on manuscripts and grants
• Website enhancements for KY School Safety
• Assisting the Center for Student Engagement and Success
• Sharing my perspective and knowledge

*Due to confidentiality and working with human subjects I am limited in what exactly it is that I can write about/post pictures of*

MONDAY, JUNE 5TH 

Today was the first day that I was able to observe the school psychology interns as they completed an autism screening for child under the age of five.  The child was accompanied by one parent, who was allowed to sit in during the process of screening. The two tests that were utilized today were the Bayley screening test and the ADOS test. These two tests required an environment that allowed for a child to engage with toys and people. Each of the screening tests had certain criteria and toys that needed to be incorporated. For example, one test would have bubbles while the other had a small mirror for the child to look into. Each item had a specific purpose that aligned with a skill in the scoring rubric. The bubbles, as I mentioned earlier served as a way to allow the child to initiate an action and hold an attention toward it. The examiner would begin the test by blowing the bubbles out, attempting to grasp the attention from the child. Once the child has become focused on the bubbles, the examiner would put away the bubbles and stop blowing any out. By placing the bubbles away, the child has an opportunity to request more bubbles either through eye contact/vocalization, leading the examiner to the bubbles, or going over and grabbing the bubbles. In addition to this, the examiner is waiting to see if the child is able to imitate popping the bubbles and effectively have joint attention. Majority of the testing was focused on allowing the child to initiate certain activities, reciprocate behaviors, and interact with their environment. After the testing we all got together as a group and while I am not allowed to necessarily score tests, I am allowed to listen in and get a deeper understanding on what is labeled as abnormal. In addition to this, I found it interesting that the parents are also tested on their levels of stress and the support that MSU provides for parents is abundant and great. It was good to see. Testing was a three-hour long process that involved speaking about the behaviors of the child, examining, and debriefing with the parent.

After testing, my aunt had set up a birthday lunch with some of the ladies at her office, the people I love the most here in KY, and enjoyed our time together!

Following this, I headed home to go work on some of my assignments before we celebrated my birthday all together. I got to call my mom, dad, and sister and talk with them about all the fun I have been having up here and celebrate with them in some way.  After this, we opened presents and had homemade pie.

Celebration for my birthday!

TUESDAY, JUNE 6TH

Today was an early day as I had the wonderful opportunity to attend a graduate level class taught by Dr. Simons, the program director for school psychology at the university. This class was roughly two hours long and went over the Biological Bases of Behavior. The topic of biology and psychology was fortunately not foreign to me because I went over this entire unit in AP Psychology in the past school year. What we covered today was mostly what we covered in my class with additional depth when it came to certain topics. These topics included connection of the mind and body, types of cells in the Central Nervous System, the structure of the neuron and what it’s key components are, neurological disorders, antagonist and agonist drugs, and neurotransmitters. At the end of class we had a brief assignment where we focused in on a specific drug and answered questions such as: what the pharmacodynamic action is behind the drug (which is essentially referring to effects or actions of a drug on the body or its target site. It describes how a drug interacts with specific receptors, enzymes, or other molecular targets to produce a therapeutic response or physiological effect), what neurotransmitter is the drug paired with, and finally, what potential side effects can be found with the drug. I focused in on Prozac, also known as Fluoxetine, and answered majority of these questions with the research that I had done. We discussed our results as a group and moved on to the reflection portion of the class. Overall, the class was very insightful and I learned a lot about a topic that I was wanting to explore more. I anticipate my notebook becoming very full with notes by the time I am finished!

After my class, I headed home to complete the rest of the work I needed to complete for the day. This involved me reading over more articles for research and finishing up creating a spreadsheet for a program I am working with.

attending my first ever graduate-level college class

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7TH

To start my morning, I headed over to the college and made my way over to the school psychology area. Today we were supposed to have an observational case; however, the participant was a no-show. Despite this, my day was full of productivity. This day was treated as a learning opportunity for the graduate interns as they got to roleplay some of the autism diagnostic tests out with each other. I first sat in with two graduates as they completed a WPPSI- IV mock test. Within this test, the examiner will position the blocks in a certain formation and ask the child to model the same figuration. The child will do so and will get scored points for whether they got it, sort of got it, or did not get it at all.  If the child has scored consecutive answers, whether it is continuously showing up as “0” or “2” as a score, then the examiner will then proceed with the test. This included answering basic questions such as, “What is the color of dirt? or, “How do you prevent getting wet in a rainstorm?” While the answer that a child may come up with may be in a wide spread of answers, the WPPSI test makes sure that it includes the possible answers that allow the child to score the points. In addition to this, if the answer feels to broad for the examiner, the WPPSI suggests that the examiner asks the question, “Can you explain that answer a little bit more for me?” in by doing so, the child can possibly get the points. This roleplay allowed for me to learn more about how the examiner is supposed to behave while testing. The examiner is encouraged to not only follow the instructions, but to be aware of what the child is doing and how to reel the child back into the test.

After this, I had the opportunity to act as the one who is being tested. I took the ADOS-2 MOD 4 exam. For this test I roleplayed as myself for the grad intern so they could gain more experience with testing an adolescent  This test was minimal in interacting with objects but rather focused on conversations and interview questions. One goal of the ADOS-2 MOD 4 exam, as written in the handbook, is to observe a participant’s spontaneous social-communitive behavior, given a situation that provides a press to communicate or interact. The exam aimed to address the some of the following skills: emphatic or emotional gestures, reciprocal social interaction, unusual eye-contact, facial expressions directed to examiner, responsibility, quality of social overtures, etc.

Overall, my experience today with testing was good. Everyday I have been able to learn something new and today I learned so much. I want to be able to look into more screening tests as well as social overtures.

After this, I spent majority of the rest of my day in my office working on research for my other internship and completing some side tasks!

ADOS-2 screenings

THURSDAY, FRIDAY, AND SATURDAY, JUNE 8TH-10TH 

This day I was out of the university and traveled over to Arkansas to meet my grandmother for the first time! It was an amazing time to speak with her and get to know her.

During down-time I would work on completing some side work for my internship.

Thank you for reading, see you next week!