Abstract
Scores on the Complex Ideational Material (CIM) were examined in reference to various performance validity tests (PVTs) in 106 adults clinically referred for neuropsychological assessment. The main diagnostic categories, reflecting a continuum between neurological and psychiatric disorders, were epilepsy, psychiatric disorders, postconcussive disorder, and psychogenic non-epileptic seizures. Cross-validation analyses suggest that in the absence of bona fide aphasia, a raw score ≤9 or T score ≤29 on the CIM is more likely to reflect non-credible presentation than impaired receptive language skills. However, these cutoffs may be associated with unacceptably high false positive rates in patients with longstanding, documented neurological deficits. Therefore, more conservative cutoffs (≤8/23) are recommended in such populations. Contrary to the widely accepted assumption that psychiatric disorders are unrelated to performance validity, results were consistent with the psychogenic interference hypothesis, suggesting that emotional distress increases the likelihood of PVT failures even in the absence of apparent external incentives to underperform on cognitive testing.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Given that the data were collected as part of a retrospective archival study, the requirement for informed consent was waived by the Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects at the institution where the data were collected. The project was also approved by the Research Ethics Board of the institution where the study was completed.
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Erdodi, L.A., Tyson, B.T., Abeare, C.A. et al. The BDAE Complex Ideational Material—a Measure of Receptive Language or Performance Validity?. Psychol. Inj. and Law 9, 112–120 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12207-016-9254-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12207-016-9254-6