Resilience of the Tower Test to Response Bias

Neurocognitive response bias is a concern of clinical neuropsychologists, as accurate assessment is not possible if the patient being tested is not putting forth maximum effort during testing. Despite decades of research in this area, very little study has specifically examined the resilience of neuropsychological tests to incomplete effort. When college students asked to feign cognitive deficits are assessed on the Tower Test from the Delis – Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEFS), they perform similarly to control participants (asked to do their best) on several Tower Test scales and significantly better than those with known clinical deficits. These results suggest that the Tower Test may have some resiliency to neurocognitive response bias.