Selected Online Papers

Journal Articles & Book Chapters | Other Publications | Selected online Papers in English and German

1) Deutschsprachige Veröffentlichungen (papers in German);
Artikel (Deutsch)

Gedächtnistörungen, Beschwerdenschilderung und Leistungsmotivation (WMT, MSVT & MCI)

Flaro, L., Green, P. & Blaskewitz, N. (im Druck = in press). Die Bedeutung der Beschwerdenvalidierung im Kindesalter. Praxis der Rechtspsychologie.

Memory Complaints Inventory paper in German but with an English abstract and tables that are easy to follow for English-speakers.

Ein Paradigmenwechsel in der Neuropsychologie? Controlling for poor effort has an effect on how we practice neuropsychology.

Brockhaus, R. & Merten, T. (2004), “Neuropsychologische Diagnostik suboptimalen Leistungsverhaltens mit dem Word Memory Test”, Nervenarzt, 75, (9), 882-887. Ein Paradigmenwechsel in der Neuropsychologie? Controlling for poor effort has an effect on how we practice neuropsychology. This paper by Merten & Brockhaus describes a simulator study and results from adult mentally handicapped people on Green’s WMT. Sonderdrucke können angefordert werden bei Robbi Brockhaus: robbi.brockhaus@googlemail.com

Unser Auftrag: German order form for Green’s Word Memory Test for Microsoft Windows program and test manual. Fax to Kanada +1 (236) 420-4891.

2) Selected papers in English:

University students seeking ADHD assessment fail WMT 10 times more often than mentally retarded residents of an institution. Why is that? For the answer, please see this abstract and two tables, which are excerpts from a paper soon to be published in the journal “Brain Injury”:-

Link External_incentives_best_predict_WMT_failure

Link What is an external incentive?

Effort has a greater effect on test scores than severe brain injury in this study of 904 cases given a comprehensive neuropsychological test battery.

MSVT simulator study The MSVT, although very quick to administer, is proving to be a very sensitive SVT. This is one of several studies in which the MSVT was found to be very accurate in identifying poor effort, even in cases who had been coached on how to defeat effort tests.

Olfaction & head injury severity Once we remove the contaminating effects of poor effort, we see that the best single predictor of head injury severity in a large sample is the ability to identify odors presented separately to each nostril using the Alberta Smell Test. There is an anatomical reason for this, as explained in this paper.

TOMM WMT CARB COMPARISON Gervais tested 519 consecutive patients and gave all of them three effort tests (TOMM, WMT & CARB). This paper shows how the three effort tests are clearly not equivalent to each other. The slide show below shows data from 1,315 cases, related to this study.

WMT & TOMM within Slick et al criteria This power point slide show was the basis for a lecture given by Paul Green at the NAN annual meeting in Tampa, Florida, October 2005. It was part of a seminar organized by Dr. Daniel Slick on the Slick, Sherman and Iverson (1999) criteria for malingering.

See the abstract of this paper in press, showing a very low false positive rate on MSVT in dementia because of profile analysis.

Note that MSVT data do not just yield ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ but that there is a specific “dementia profile”, which is unlike that from simulators.

Characterization of the Medical Symptom Validity Test in evaluation of clinically referred memory disorders clinic patients

Laura L.S. Howe, Ashton M. Anderson, David A.S. Kaufman, Bonnie C. Sachs and David W. Loring
Available online 24 July 2007.

Abstract

We prospectively evaluated performance of 63 referrals to a memory disorders clinic who received the Medical Symptom Validity Test (MSVT) as part of their standard neuropsychological evaluation. The patients were grouped based on independent medical diagnoses and presence or absence of a potential financial incentive to under-perform. Twenty-seven patients (42.9%) scored below cutoffs on the MSVT symptom validity indices. Two individuals in the potential financial incentive group showed clear signs of invalid responding (18.2%). Twenty-two of the remaining 25 patients who failed the symptom validity indices corresponded to the dementia profile. Three individuals did not correspond to the dementia profile but are thought to have performed validly representing a 4.8% false positive rate. When considering all MSVT indices, the base rate of invalid responding in the potential financial incentive to under-perform group increased to 27.3%. Combining all groups our base rate of invalid responding was 4.8%. Specific performances are presented.

These findings were replicated by Robert Frerichs (Glenrose Hospital) in a NAN poster, which will hopefully lead to publication soon.

See the abstract in this paper on effort in children:- Effort In Children 2006