Word Memory Test Performance in Children

Abstract

One-hundred and thirty-five children between the ages of 7 and 18 years were evaluated clinically. Their diagnoses included Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) or Effects, Schizophrenia, Bipolar Mood Disorder, various neurological diseases, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Conduct Disorder, Oppositional-Defiant Disorder and learning disabilities. As part of a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment, the children were given the Word Memory Test (WMT; Green, Allen, & Astner, 1996; Green & Astner, 1995), containing various subtests which measure, respectively, effort and verbal memory. Although age and verbal intelligence are known to affect scores on most ability tests, they were not found to be significant determinants of WMT effort scores. Younger children did not score any lower on the effort subtests than older children. The children scored as well as a group of parents seeking custody of their children and they scored higher than adult patients with mild head injuries. The computerized WMT requires some basic reading skills and some children with lower than a grade 3 reading level scored at a relatively low level on the effort subtests. The current data suggest that most children with at least a grade 3 reading level can pass the WMT using the adult criteria. It is concluded that the WMT is potentially useful in the evaluation of effort during pediatric neuropsychological evaluations. Further research is needed to replicate these findings and to develop child norms for the memory subtests.

Word Memory Test failure 23 times higher in mild brain injury than in parents seeking custody: The power of external incentives

“…The difference may be partly explained by the relatively small sample in the Bowden et al study [22], with especially small numbers in the severe category, and the fact that children as young as six years old were tested with the WMT. The WMT is not recommended for children under the age of seven years nor for anyone with a reading level of less than grade three [8]. It was not stated in the paper how many in the sample were adults and how many were children but we find much lower rates of failure on WMT in children than in adults.…”

“…It is likely that, in the few children who did fail the WMT (10.9% of cases), poor effort was the underlying cause in most cases. It was demonstrated in a previous study that the few children who failed the WMT on first testing could easily be induced to pass the WMT on retesting by being given a small external incentive in the form of a can of pop or a candy [8], once again highlighting the importance of motivation on testing.…”

“…Likewise, in 904 consecutive compensation cases of mixed diagnoses, 28% failed the effort measures of the WMT [6]. Additionally, Sullivan [7] reports a 48% rate of failure rate of the WMT in a series of adult university students seeking assessment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), whereas only 12% of children with ADHD and other disorders failed the WMT [8]. Larrabee [9] estimated that 40% of mild head injury cases in litigation fail effort tests and, in such cases, the neuropsychological test scores would be considered invalid.…”

Traumatic Brain Injury Across the Lifespan: A Neuropsychological Tutorial for Attorneys

“…In contrast, tests such as the Word Memory Test (WMT; Green 2003) and Computerized Assessment of Response Bias (Allen et al 1997) require word reading and number recognition and, therefore, may not be appropriate for children younger than the age of 11 years, although on these tests, older children perform similarly to adults (Courtney et al 2003). With regard to the WMT, this measure seems to be appropriate for children who can demonstrate at least a third grade reading level, in that children with these reading levels consistently perform similar to adults (Green and Flaro 2003).…”

Effort-testing In Children Undergoing PsychoEducational Assessment Using The Medical Symptom Validity Test

“…In fact, there was no significant difference between the pass/fail rate of the effort measures between the French Canadian and the Normative sample (5% failure rate). The vast majority of students passed the MSVT effort measures, even the participants exhibiting behavioral problems, as was the case for the other children's clinical samples and in the literature documenting the use of MSVT with children with and without impairments [3] [4] [8] [9].…”