MINDING YOUR PS AND QS WHEN USING FORCED-CHOICE RECOGNITION TESTS

Denney (1996), and Frederick, Carter, and Powel (1995) described a for ced-choice recognition test (FCRT) to evaluate suspicious complaints o f remote memory loss. Although the two-alternative forced-choice trial s in symptom validity testing have equal prior probabilities of correc t answers (p) and incorrect answers (q), ps and qs might vary from 0.5 on individual trials of FCRTs. FCRTs nonetheless remain conservative procedures for evaluating suspicious memory loss, as long as the overa ll p approximates 0.5. In computer simulations, distributions in which p not equal q not equal 0.5 resulted in more conservative decision ma king than distributions in which p = q = 0.5. The authors demonstrate the ease in constructing FCRTs with overall p = 0.5 and discuss the pr oper application of FCRT findings in a clinical evaluation.