A COMPARISON OF 4 TESTS OF MALINGERING AND THE EFFECTS OF COACHING

This study examined the ability of four measures of suboptimal perform ance to correctly classify four groups of subjects (normal controls, u ncoached malingering, coached malingering, and head injured). Only the Portland Digit Recognition Test-Computerized (PDRT-C) identified simu lating malingerers with greater than chance accuracy while minimizing false positives. Coached subjects were better able than their uncoache d counterparts to avoid detection on all measures. In an additional an alysis, a discriminant function using the response latency and total c orrect scores from the PDRT-C identified 70% of the coached malingerer s on cross validation. The three other tests (Nonverbal Forced Choice Test, 21-Item Test, and Dot Counting Test) failed to obtain a satisfac tory classification rate for the malingering groups as a whole and coa ched malingerers in particular. (C) 1998 National Academy of Neuropsyc hology. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.