Robert McKinney, PhD Biography

I am a psychologist license by the State of Indiana in 1999 and a member of the American Psychological Association. I am endorsed as a Health Service Provider in Psychology. I earned a Doctoral degree from Ball State University in School Psychology, a Cognate in Neuropsychology, and an additional concentration in Counseling Psychology. My doctoral internship sites were Riley Hospital Child Development Center, Indianapolis, Indiana, and Indiana Boys School. For my Doctoral Dissertation, I tested 100 consecutive admissions to a residential facility with an extensive battery of neuropsychological, educational, and social-emotional tests. Analyses of these data provided the foundation for a psychological and neuropsychological model for assessing and treating children, adolescents, and adults. My clinical expertise is with persons with disruptive, harmful behavior disorders, learning disorders, and symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, as well behaviors often characterized as “ in the Spectrum”.

Prior to my licensure as a psychologist, I obtained a Master's Degree in Education with a Major in Counseling (Purdue, 1971). I worked 28 years as a Master’s Degree level clinician and also served different roles as a clinical supervisor and program supervisor. Many years were spent working with adolescent boys and girls involved with the criminal justice system as well as adults with misdemeanor and felony convictions. I worked in both residential treatment and community settings. I was able to help people with moderate to severe behavioral and emotional difficulties including psychiatric diagnoses cope with and improve their conditions.

My personal philosophy for psychological interventions includes four basic assumptions:

1. Who a person is, is a result of their biology, their previous experience, and their opportunities.

2. How a person is currently doing is the best they can do right now.

3. Often people want better outcomes in life, but also want to continue to be the “real” person they are.

4. Important improvement in outcomes for the “real” person is achieved by intentionally directed changes that are guided by an individually focused comprehensive neuropsychological evaluation. This leads to remediation and/or compensation for identified deficits that the person experiences in their interactions with their environment and achieving emotional self-regulation.

From a neuropsychological perspective, I rely strongly on the empirically-based Reitan-Wolfson model of neuropsychological functioning, assessment, and treatment. The Reitan-Wolfson model is in many ways consistent with other neuropsychological theories but dismisses unproven theoretical aspirations and only asserts brain-based connections to where brain-behavior relationships have been documented. Their model, like Luria’s model, presents 3 levels of neuropsychological functioning.

1. An initial registration of incoming material and integration of this material with the individual’s past experience.

2. The second level of processing depends largely on the content of the incoming material and is organized largely according to the lateralization functions of the cerebral hemisphere.

3. The third stage of processing is directed toward more complex and difficult tasks consisting of concept formation, reasoning, and logical analyses.

I have three foundational strategies for guiding treatment interventions supplemented by many experienced-based strategies.

1. Engage in a friendly manner.

2. Avoid power struggles.

3.Target interventions that are designed for immediate success on a step-by-step basis. This is sometimes called a zero-fail model.

I am trained in Applied Behavior Analysis and have considerable experience using Functional Behavior Assessments to design individual treatment interventions. I have found that integrating behavior-based interventions based on the intrapersonal and interpersonal data collected from a comprehensive neuropsychological report is the most efficient and least frustrating problem-solving method.

Tests included in my evaluations include the Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Battery; the Wechsler Tests of Intelligence and Achievement; the Behavior Rating of Executive Functioning; the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test; the Grooved Pegboard Test; Conners Continuous Performance Test and Auditory Continuous Performance Test; and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. I use the Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessments to collect and organize data from parents and teachers.