Conducting Research with Non-clinical Healthy Undergraduates: Does Effort Play a Role in Neuropsychological Test Performance?

Abstract

Poor effort by examinees during neuropsychological testing has a profound effect on test performance. Although neuropsychological experiments often utilize healthy undergraduate students, the test-taking effort of this population has not been investigated previously. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether undergraduate students exercise variable effort in neuropsychological testing. During two testing sessions, participants (N = 36) were administered three Symptom Validity Tests (SVTs), the Test of Memory Malingering, the Dot Counting Test, and the Victoria Symptom Validity Test (VSVT), along with various neuropsychological tests. Analyses revealed 55.6% of participants in Session 1 and 30.8% of participants in Session 2 exerted poor effort on at least one SVT. Poor effort on the SVTs was significantly correlated with poor performance on various neuropsychological tests and there was support for the temporal stability of effort. These preliminary results suggest that the base rate of suboptimal effort in a healthy undergraduate population is quite high. Accordingly, effort may serve as a source of variance in neuropsychological research when using undergraduate students.

Exaggerating Psychopathology Produces Residual Effects That Are Resistant to Corrective Feedback: An Experimental Demonstration

“…Assignment was random, with the restriction that men and women were evenly distributed across the three groups. Note that subsample sizes of n ¼ 15 are not unusual in experimental research on malingering (e.g., Bolan, Foster, Schmand, & Bolan, 2002;An, Zakzanis, & Joordens, 2012). Indeed, larger subsamples might yield empirical patterns that are significant yet bear little relevance to clinical reality, which is almost by definition oriented toward n ¼ 1.…”

Predictors and Impact of Self-Reported Suboptimal Effort on Estimates of Prevalence of HIV-Associated Neurocognitive Disorders

“…Anecdotal evidence suggests that a substantial portion of individuals enrolled in epidemiological studies may not put forth adequate and/or consistent effort on neurocognitive testing, an observation supported by empirical evidence in other research populations (e.g., college students seeking course credit) 24-26 . Such suboptimal effort may have substantial downstream effects on HAND prevalence estimates and our understanding of variability of HAND severity over time.…”

A Comparison of the Degree of Effort Involved in the TOMM and the ACS Word Choice Test Using a Dual-Task Paradigm

“…Specifically, in very impaired populations such as patients with severe dementia, the TOMM has been found to have a high false-positive rate, whereas in TBI samples, the falsepositive rate is low (Iverson et al, 2010;Merten et al, 2007;Pivovarova, Rosenfeld, Dole, Green, & Zapf, 2009;Rees et al, 1998;Teicher & Wagner, 2004;Tombaugh, 1996Tombaugh, , 1997. That the TOMM may have low sensitivity has been demonstrated in both clinical and undergraduate samples (An, Zakzanis, & Joordens, 2012;Armistead-Jehle & Gervais, 2011). The TOMM has been demonstrated to be insensitive to age, education, mood disturbance, and all but the most severe dementias (Merten et al, 2007;Pivovarova et al, 2009;Tombaugh, 1996).…”