ABSTRACT
Commensurate with neuropsychologists’ increasing forensic interests and increasing involvement in forensic activities in recent years, clinical researchers have explored with greater vigor effective methods of identifying patients’ fraudulent objective test performances (Sweet, King, Malina, Bergman, & Simmons, 2002). Validity testing of alleged psychological symptoms has been in place for decades within the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI: Hathaway & McKinley, 1943; MMPI-2: Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989), and development of novel MMPI-2 validity scales in recent years (e.g., Back Infrequency, Fb: Butcher et al., 1989; Fake Bad Scale, FBS: Lees-Haley, English, & Glenn, 1991; Infrequency Psychopathology Scale, Fp: Arbisi & Ben-Porath, 1995) has improved the ability to evaluate psychological symptom exaggeration. Furthermore, although by comparison the application of cognitive effort measures is a relatively new phenomenon, great strides have been made recently through use of forced-choice methodology (e.g., the Word Memory Test, WMT: Green, Allen, & Astner, 1996; Victoria Symptom Validity Test, VSVT: Slick, Hopp, & Strauss, 1995; Test of Memory Malingering, TOMM: Tombaugh, 1996) and application of cognitive effort indicators derived from standard neuropsychological ability measures. As a result, neuropsychologists have a larger array of symptom validity tests to choose from than ever before (Bianchini, Mathias, & Greve, 2001).
