DETECTING THE FAKING OF AMNESIA - PERFORMANCE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SIMULATORS AND PATIENTS WITH MEMORY IMPAIRMENT

This study attempted to establish criteria for distinguishing patients with genuine memory problems from those who are attempting to simulat e amnesia. The performance of simulators and genuine amnesics was comp ared under distraction conditions in which subjects had to count backw ards between presentation and recall, and under no-distraction conditi ons in which the retention interval was unfilled. Genuine amnesics per formed significantly worse than controls under distraction conditions, but did not perform significantly worse than controls under no-distra ction conditions. However, those attempting to fake amnesia performed significantly worse than controls under no-distraction as well as unde r distraction conditions. They also exaggerated the memory deficit ove rall relative to genuine amnesics. It is suggested that these two crit eria might be used successfully in clinical settings to assist in the detection of simulators.