We administered the b Test, a new measure to identify malingering requiring recognition of overlearned information, to 34 suspected malingerers and to 161 subjects in various clinical groups (moderate to severe head injury, elderly depressed, learning disability, schizophrenia, right and left CVA, and elderly normals). Comparisons of groups revealed more commission and omission errors in the su...

Forensic psychiatrists and psychologists are often called on to provide opinions and render testimony in which minor head trauma accompanied by persistent somatic, cognitive, and/or emotional symptoms is alleged. The frequency of persistent symptoms following such minor head injury is generally low. The forensic clinician therefore must differentiate between subtle brain dysfunction, symptom am...

The accurate detection of deception or lying is a challenge to experts in many scientific disciplines. To investigate if specific cerebral activation characterized feigned memory impairment, six healthy male volunteers underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging with a block-design paradigm while they performed forced-choice memory tasks involving both simulated malingering and under normal...

Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM) has been suggested to assist in the detection of malingering, and a putatively validated formula method for defining genuine and fake performances is available In the present study, 47 normal individuals were asked to fake cognitive impairment on the SPM; a day later, their genuine performances were obtained. As expected, the genuine performances were...

The validity of test data from multiscale inventories is dependent on self-reports that may be easily distorted by malingering. In examining the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2's (MMPI-2) role in the assessment of feigning, this review provides a conceptual analysis of the detection strategies underlying the MMPI-2 validity scales. The conceptual analysis is augmented by comprehen...

Research on the Test of Memory Malingering (TOMM) [Tombaugh, T. N., 1996. The Test of Memory Malingering. Toronto, Canada: Multi-Health Systems], has consistently shown that it is sensitive to exaggerated or deliberate faking of memory impairment, but it is relatively unaffected by a wide variety of neurological impairments causing genuine memory dysfunction. However, there is little research o...

Suspects awaiting trial often claim that they cannot remember important parts of their violent crimes. It is not unusual that forensic experts readily accept such claims and interpret them in terms of dissociative amnesia or, more specifically, a "red-out". This interpretation hinges on the assumption that heightened levels of stress implicated in violent crimes interfere with memory. We argue ...

The use of effort tests is standard practice in forensic neuropsychology. There is a tremendous amount of good information available in test manuals and the research literature regarding the proper and responsible use of these tests. However, it is clear that there are numerous ethical issues and considerations associated with the assessment of exaggeration, poor effort, and malingering. Many o...