No abstract

Elderly adults were compared with high and low test-anxious young adults on a task that required deciding whether a word could be considered an instance of the category name shown with it. The words were either typical or atypical members of the category. The elderly adults showed the slowest reaction times for all decisions, and the age difference was proportionally the same for atypical and typical instances. Elderly subjects were more like highanxiety young adults than like low-anxiety young adults for atypical instances. but elderly subjects were significantly worse than anxious young adults for typical instances and unrelated words. These results offer some support for the role of anxiety in producing the aging performance deficit. but this factor seems insufficient to explain all age-related performance differences.

The WAIS-III Digit Span and Vocabulary subtests were investigated as indicators of feigned cognitive impairment. Participants included 64 undergraduates randomly assigned to control, symptom-coached, or test-coached groups. Six previously researched validity indicators were examined. We hypothesized that symptom-coached participants would perform worse relative to test-coached simulators. Analyses determined both simulator groups performed lower than controls on all indicators except Vocabulary. Symptom-coached participants, however, did not differ from test-coached participants on any indicator. Classification accuracies for these six indicators ranged from 42 to 78%. While the WAIS-III validity indicators hold some promise, they should not be employed as independent measures.

In a replication and extension of previous research (Tenhula & Sweet, 1996), the current study investigated the utility of the Category Test (CT) for detecting feigned cognitive impairment. Ninety-two undergraduate participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups and administered the CT. A Coached Simulator group was instructed to simulate cognitive impairment and was provided test-taking strategies to avoid detection. An Uncoached Simulator group was simply instructed to feign impairment. A control group was instructed to perform optimally. In addition, the CT results of 30 traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients were analyzed. The results largely supported the utility of five CT malingering indicators identified by Tenhula and Sweet: (a) number of errors on subtests I and II, (b) number of errors on subtest VII, (c) total CT errors, (d) number of errors on 19 "easy" items, and (e) number of criteria exceeded. Correct Classification rates of the five indicators for Uncoached Simulators and optimal performance controls ranged from 87% to 98%. Correct Classification rates for the TBI patients ranged from 70% to 100%. In addition, significantly more Coached Simulators were misclassified as nonsimulators on four of the CT malingering indicators, relative to their Uncoached counterparts. A decision rule of > 1 error on subtests I and II was consistently the most accurate malingering indicator, regardless of degree of coaching or presence of TBI. This indicator correctly classified 76% of all simulators and 100% of the optimal performance controls and TBI patients. Implications of providing persons with test-taking strategies and the utility of these CT malingering indicators for various populations are discussed.

This investigation explored the usefulness of serial position patterns during word recall on the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT; Rey, 1964) as an indicator of poor effort. Significantly better recall for early (primacy) and recent (recency) material defines the serial position effect (SPE; Rundus, 1971). The SPE on the RAVLT was examined in four groups: normal controls (NC), symptom-coached simulators (SC), test-coached simulators (TC), and a group of moderate to severe subacute traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients. Normal control participants and TBI patients demonstrated the expected SPE. Only the SC simulators clearly suppressed the primacy effect. The SPE appears neither sensitive nor specific enough to be used independently of more sensitive symptom validity tests in the detection of suboptimal effort. It may be especially problematic when used with clients presenting with sophisticated styles of exaggeration and in settings with lower base rates of compromised effort.