The influence of labels and facts on children’s and adults’ categorization

The validity of the test of memory malingering (TOMM) with deaf individuals

“…Clinicians can interpret the Deaf patient's scores as reflecting the amount of effort the patient is exerting on the task, rather than indicating a difference in VALIDITY OF TOMM WITH DEAF INDIVIDUALS 29 performance due to the existing language barrier. Scores that fall below the cut-off with Deaf individuals can be interpreted as evidence of poor or incomplete effort, rather than a false positive unless the patient presents with evidence of a serious cognitive disorder, such as dementia or a psychotic disorder (Iverson et al, 2007). According to what has been found in this study, the TOMM therefore does not need to be revised in its administration or image content to be made more appropriate for Deaf individuals who use ASL.…”

“…However, unavoidable Type I and Type II errors on forced-choice PVTs arise with "Near-Pass" individuals who perform above-chance but below cut-off scores (Bigler, 2012). Clinicians are advised to review the literature when selecting effort tests to implement in their practice as cut-off scores are routinely examined in various clinical groups (Iverson, Le Page, Koehler, Shojania, & Badii, 2007). Therefore, it is important for neuropsychologists to consider a variety of components which may potentially impact the validity of the assessment.…”

“…However, the TOMM has been validated amongst a variety of clinical groups in the literature who have all demonstrated the ability to achieve the established cut-off score. Reasonably so, researchers have described the TOMM as an effortless measure of effort (Iverson et al, 2007).…”

“…However, research has outlined a variety of other groups which have achieved similar performance levels as control groups and the established cut-off score on the TOMM. These include individuals suffering from depression (Rees, Tombaugh, & Boulay, 2001), anxiety (Ashendorf, Constantinou, & McCaffrey, 2004), VALIDITY OF TOMM WITH DEAF INDIVIDUALS 9 psychotic disorders (Duncan, 2005), fibromyalgia (Iverson et al, 2007), and children as young as five years old (Constantinou & McCaffrey, 2003;Donders, 2005).…”

“…The TOMM is a task that requires individuals to observe a large number of visual stimuli, specifically everyday common objects for a total of 3 seconds each, one at a time (Tombaugh, 1996). The cognitive processes involved in the task includes a quick encoding process of the visual stimulus by incorporating semantic information of the names of the objects (Koutstaal, Reddy, Jackson, Cendan, & Schacter, 2003) and categorization; a technique requiring a variety of cues to group discriminable properties, events, or objects into classes (Johanson & Papafragou, 2016). Although instructions on the TOMM clearly state that individuals must learn to remember the object itself rather than its name, individuals still engage in semantic categorization.…”