Ability of college students to simulate ADHD on objective measures of attention.
OBJECTIVE
The authors examined the ability of college students to simulate ADHD symptoms on objective and self-report measures and the relationship between knowledge of ADHD and ability to simulate ADHD.


METHODS
Undergraduate students were assigned to a control or a simulated ADHD malingering condition and compared with a clinical AD/HD group. The authors used several clinical attentional measures and symptom validity tests to differentiate experimental groups via a series of multivariate procedures.


RESULTS
Simulators successfully feigned ADHD symptoms on a retrospective self-report measure. Moreover, knowledge of ADHD was unrelated to objective attentional measure performance. Overall, participants who simulated ADHD on some objective measures (i.e., specific Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III [WAIS-III] subtests) showed similar performance to the clinical ADHD comparison sample.


CONCLUSIONS
The implications of these findings highlight the importance of relying on multiple vectors of information, be it objective, observational, self-report, or reports by others, when diagnosing ADHD and assessing factors related to potential secondary gain.
Lee Booksh
Randee
R
Pella
Russell D
RD
Singh
Ashvind N
AN
Drew Gouvier
William
W
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001289:Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity / Q000175:diagnosis*; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008306:Malingering / Q000175:diagnosis*; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D018579:Patient Selection; D016544:Patient Simulation; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D012647:Self-Assessment; D013334:Students; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014495:Universities; D014888:Wechsler Scales