Quote:
|
At one end of the spectrum are normal people. Actually it is very difficult to find a perfectly normal person. He is a statistical construct, which we cannot find in the real world. All of us have some degree of eccentricity and mildly neurotic. The psychopath on the other hand is a deviant person. Into this category would fall criminals, sex offenders drug addicts etc. the mentally handicapped on the other hand are those who are feeble minded and mentally retarded. The psychotic at the other end of the spectrum lives in a perpetually dark and shadowy world inhabited with phantoms and phobias. They are those unfortunate few who are totally cut out from reality and society. (Emphasis added) http://ramm.hubpages.com/hub/NORMAL-...N-INTRODUCTION
|
I would like to relegate "normal" to a setting on a dryer. Not long ago, however, Dr. Thomas Insel, Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, said:
It seems obvious, but bears repeating, that understanding normal functioning of brain-behavior relationships is critical to providing insight into abnormal brain-behavior relationships. To discover the causes of psychiatric disorders and develop improved treatments and interventions, NIMH must demonstrate how interactions between genes, environment, experiences, and development contribute to the formation and function of brain circuits. (Emphasis added) http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/direct...ng-myths.shtml
Construct:
Construct - The concept or the characteristic that a test is designed to measure, but is not directly observable (referred to as a latent variable). A construct is a theoretical concept or trait inferred from multiple evidences and used to explain observable behavior patterns. In psychological testing, a characteristic that is considered to vary across individuals, such as extroversion, visual-spatial ability, creativity, etc. (Emphasis added) http://www.riversidepublishing.com/pdfs/WebGlossary.pdf
Quantifying Construct Validity:
Construct validity is one of the most central concepts in psychology. Researchers generally establish the construct validity of a measure by correlating it with a number of other measures and arguing from the pattern of correlations that the measure is associated with these variables in theoretically predictable ways. This article presents 2 simple metrics for quantifying construct validity that provide effect size estimates indicating the extent to which the observed pattern of correlations in a convergent-discriminant validity matrix matches the theoretically predicted pattern of correlations. Both measures, based on contrast analysis, provide simple estimates of validity that can be compared across studies, constructs, and measures meta-analytically, and can be implemented without the use of complex statistical procedures that may limit their accessibility. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved) (Emphasis added) http://psycnet.apa.org/?&fa=main.doi...-3514.84.3.608
So, "normal" refers to the product of measuring unobservable characteristics that vary across individuals by employing a theoretical "concept or trait inferred from multiple evidences and used to explain observable behavior patterns."
After all that is done, testing on an individual may well determine he/she is outside the statistical norm yet does not fit within any statistical abnormality.