Estimating the prevalence of use of kinesiology-style manual muscle testing: A survey of educators

Jensen, Anne M.

doi:10.1016/j.aimed.2015.08.003

Cited by 6 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Finally, due to its widespread use [5], MRT’s true clinical value must be explored [38, 46–50]. Toward this end, the efficacy of MRT technique systems must be investigated via rigorously-designed randomised, controlled trials (RCTs).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One form of MMT, muscle response testing (MRT), in which muscles are tested, not to evaluate muscular strength, but neural control, emerged following work in the 1970s and1980s by Goodheart and others [3, 4]. Because MRT is estimated to be used by over 1 million people worldwide [5], assessing its validity is necessary. Distinguishing MRT from other types of manual muscle testing, typically only one muscle is used for testing, and is tested repeatedly, to detect the presence of potential target conditions, such as low back pain [6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Estimating the accuracy of muscle response testing: two randomised-order blinded studies

Jensen

Stevens

Burls

2016

BMC Complement Altern Med

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BackgroundManual muscle testing (MMT) is a non-invasive assessment tool used by a variety of health care providers to evaluate neuromusculoskeletal integrity, and muscular strength in particular. In one form of MMT called muscle response testing (MRT), muscles are said to be tested, not to evaluate muscular strength, but neural control. One established, but insufficiently validated, application of MRT is to assess a patient’s response to semantic stimuli (e.g. spoken lies) during a therapy session. Our primary aim was to estimate the accuracy of MRT to distinguish false from true spoken statements, in randomised and blinded experiments. A secondary aim was to compare MRT accuracy to the accuracy when practitioners used only their intuition to differentiate false from true spoken statements.MethodsTwo prospective studies of diagnostic test accuracy using MRT to detect lies are presented. A true positive MRT test was one that resulted in a subjective weakening of the muscle following a lie, and a true negative was one that did not result in a subjective weakening of the muscle following a truth. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 using a simplified methodology. In Experiment 1, 48 practitioners were paired with 48 MRT-naïve test patients, forming unique practitioner-test patient pairs. Practitioners were enrolled with any amount of MRT experience. In Experiment 2, 20 unique pairs were enrolled, with test patients being a mix of MRT-naïve and not-MRT-naïve. The primary index test was MRT. A secondary index test was also enacted in which the practitioners made intuitive guesses (“intuition”), without using MRT. The actual verity of the spoken statement was compared to the outcome of both index tests (MRT and Intuition) and their mean overall fractions correct were calculated and reported as mean accuracies.ResultsIn Experiment 1, MRT accuracy, 0.659 (95% CI 0.623 - 0.695), was found to be significantly different (p < 0.01) from intuition accuracy, 0.474 (95% CI 0.449 - 0.500), and also from the likelihood of chance (0.500; p < 0.01). Experiment 2 replicated the findings of Experiment 1. Testing for various factors that may have influenced MRT accuracy failed to detect any correlations.ConclusionsMRT has repeatedly demonstrated significant accuracy for distinguishing lies from truths, compared to both intuition and chance. The primary limitation of this study is its lack of generalisability to other applications of MRT and to MMT.Study registrationThe Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR; www.anzctr.org.au; ID # ACTRN12609000455268, and US-based ClinicalTrials.gov (ID # NCT01066312).Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12906-016-1416-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating the accuracy of muscle response testing: two randomised-order blinded studies

Jensen

Stevens

Burls

2016

BMC Complement Altern Med

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“…Muscle strength testing is typically used to diagnose neuromusculoskeletal (NMS) disorders, however in recent times other applications have emerged. One type of MMT, MRT, arose from Goodheart's Applied Kinesiology and other techniques in the 1980's [3,4], and is estimated to be used by over 1 million people worldwide [5]. MRT is distinct from other types of MMT in that typically only one muscle (usually the deltoid) is tested repeatedly, to detect the presence of potential target conditions, such as food allergies [6][7][8][9][10], phobia [11,12], and deceit [1,2].…”

Section: Muscle Testing For Lie Detection: Grip Strength Dynamometry mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, despite its widespread use, many clinicians argue that MRT lacks credibility objectivity and validity (e.g. inter-examiner reliability) [5,13].…”

Section: Muscle Testing For Lie Detection: Grip Strength Dynamometry mentioning

confidence: 99%

Muscle testing for lie detection: Grip strength dynamometry is inadequate

Jensen

Stevens

Burls

2018

European Journal of Integrative Medicine

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Introduction: Although DMT is primarily used in the diagnosis of neuromusculoskeletal (NMS) disorders, previous studies have attempted to use other forms of manual muscle testing (MMT) to detect conditions other than NMS. For instance, muscle response testing (MRT) was used to distinguish lies (a known stressor) from truth. Therefore, it is hypothesised that DMT might be used to detect deceit as well, and the aim of this study was to investigate if grip strength via dynamometric muscle testing (DMT) could be used to distinguish lies from truth. Methods: A prospective study of diagnostic test accuracy was carried out. Twenty participants, aged 18-65 years, with healthy hands, were recruited. Participants were given a visual stimulus and followed an auditory instruction to lie or to tell the truth about the stimulus, before recording grip strength with a dynamometer. Testing proceeded in this manner until 20 DMTs were performed, 10 by each hand. We analysed the accuracy of grip strength for detecting lies. Results: The mean grip strength after true statements was found to be 24.9 kg (95% CI 20.3 to 29.6), and after false statements, 24.8 (95% CI 20.2 to 29.5), which were not statistically different (p=0.61). Conclusion: DMT via hand-held grip strength dynamometry failed to distinguish lies from truth. These results seem to suggest that strength as measured by DMT is not impacted by deceit. A limitation of this study is it is not generalisable to other types or applications of MMT or MRT or to other target conditions.

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“…14 The tests would encompass a wide-ranging structure to assess not only the mental processes in patients (numerical/verbal/diagrammatic reasoning, tests for explicit/implicit memory), but also the interaction between patient and task in various situations and environments, as well as the response and reaction performance during kinesiology tasks to assess neural control in various clinical contexts. 14,15 Performance results would be recorded in computer-based formats, enabling scientists to deduce the novel context exploration (NCE)/neuron interaction in individuals. 14 Comprehensive testing would be ongoing to determine the long-term effects of NCEs.…”

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confidence: 99%