Brief screening indexes for malingering: A confirmation of Vocabulary minus Digit Span from the WAIS-III and the Rarely Missed Index from the WMS-III.
This study investigated the specificity of empirically derived screening measures for the detection of symptom exaggeration in persons with a diagnosis of alcohol abuse (n = 30), polysubstance abuse (n = 43), or head trauma (n = 27). The first measure evaluated was Vocabulary (V) minus Digit Span (DS) (Mittenberg, Theroux-Fichera, Zielinski, & Heilbronner, 1995); the second measure was the Rarely Missed Index (RMI) for the WMS-III Logical Memory subtest (Killgore & Della-Pietra, 2000). V-DS misclassified 0% of individuals in the alcohol abuse group, 2% of those in the polysubstance abuse group, and 0% of head injury cases. RMI misclassification rates were 3%, 5%, and 7% for the alcohol abuse, polysubstance abuse, and head injury groups, respectively. Overall accuracy rates were 99% for V-DS and 95% for RMI.
Miller
Lori J
LJ
Central Missouri State University, Warrensburg, MO 64093, USA.
Ryan
Joseph J
JJ
Carruthers
Christine A
CA
Cluff
Richard B
RB
D000328:Adult; D006259:Craniocerebral Trauma / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008306:Malingering / Q000175:diagnosis*; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014888:Wechsler Scales