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Clinical Acumen, Common Sense, and Data-Based Decision Making in the Assessment of Dissimulation During Head Injury Litigation

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Detection of Malingering during Head Injury Litigation

Abstract

Civil litigation related to personal injury over the last several decades has increased substantially, and consequently, the issue of assessment of false presentation and effort related to malingering has also increased. Base rates for malingering seen by neuropsychologists or psychologists of course vary depending on the specific sample of patients seen as the characteristics of different samples of patients seen can be very diverse.

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Notes

  1. 1.

     Brain injury and head injury are used synonymously in this work as has become customary in the field; nevertheless, it is recognized clearly that the head can be injured in many different ways while the brain goes unscathed.

  2. 2.

    There are some known exceptions to this general principle, but they are typically not associated with external trauma-related CNS insult, but are related to certain insidious toxins, most prominently carbon monoxide and diseases that have accompanying iatrogenic neuropsychological complications, e.g., leukemia.

  3. 3.

    For example, if the probability of event A  =  0.01 and the probability of event B  =  0.01 and r AB  =  0, the probability of A and B occurring for the same individual is p(A) p(B) or 0.0001. Even when p  =  0.10 for each event, when r AB  =  0, the probability of A and B (not A or B) is quite small: when p (A)  =  0.10 and p(B)  =  0.10, (AB)  =  0.01.

  4. 4.

    Even Meehl (1967), a name so often associated with statistical proof of group membership and actuarial classification, has voiced his harangue about the overreliance of psychologists on null hypothesis significance testing and how it has retarded progress in the discipline.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Educational Psychology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843, USA

    Cecil R. Reynolds

  2. Psych Associates of Maryland, Bethesda, MD, 20814, USA

    Arthur MacNeill Horton Jr.

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  1. Cecil R. Reynolds
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Correspondence to Cecil R. Reynolds .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept Educational Psychology, Texas A&M University, Mail Stop 4225, College Station, 77843, Texas, USA

    Cecil R. Reynolds

  2. Psych Associates of Maryland, Bethesda, 20814, Maryland, USA

    Arthur MacNeill Horton, Jr.

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Reynolds, C.R., Horton, A.M. (2012). Clinical Acumen, Common Sense, and Data-Based Decision Making in the Assessment of Dissimulation During Head Injury Litigation. In: Reynolds, C., Horton, Jr., A. (eds) Detection of Malingering during Head Injury Litigation. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0442-2_13

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