Incorporating Neurophysiological Measures Into Clinical Assessments: Fundamental Challenges and a Strategy for Addressing Them

Recent scientific initiatives have called for increased use of neurobiological variables in clinical and other applied assessments. However, the task of incorporating neural measures into psychological assessments entails significant methodological challenges that have not been effectively addressed to date. As a result, neurophysiological measures remain underutilized in clinical and applied assessments, and formal procedures for integrating such measures with report-based measures are lacking. In this article, we discuss major methodological issues that have impeded progress in this direction, and propose a systematic research strategy for integrating neurophysiological measures into psychological assessment protocols. The strategy we propose is an iterative psychoneurometric approach that provides a means to establish multimethod (MM) measurement models for core biobehavioral traits that influence functioning across diverse areas of life. We provide a detailed illustration of a MM model for one such trait, inhibitory control (inhibition-disinhibition), and highlight work being done to develop counterpart models for other biobehavioral traits (i.e., threat sensitivity, reward sensitivity, affiliative capacity). We discuss how these measurement models can be refined and extended through use of already existing data sets, and outline steps that can be taken to establish norms for MM assessments and optimize the feasibility of their use in everyday practice. We believe this model-oriented strategy can provide a viable pathway toward effective use of neurophysiological measures in routine clinical assessments. Public Significance Statement Neurobiological factors are important for understanding mental health problems, but neural measures remain underused in clinical assessments. We discuss methodological issues contributing to this lack of use, and propose a systematic research strategy for integrating neurophysiological measures into psychological assessment protocols.