Brief Screening Indexes for Malingering: A Confirmation of Vocabulary Minus Digit Span from the WAIS-III and the Rarely Missed Index from the WMS-III

Abstract

This study investigated the specificity of empirically derived screening measures for the detection of symptom exaggeration in persons with a diagnosis of alcohol abuse(n = 30), polysubstance abuse(n = 43), or head trauma(n = 27). The first measure evaluated was Vocabulary(V)minus Digit Span(DS)(Mittenberg, Theroux-Fichera, Zielinski, & Heilbronner, 1995); the second measure was the Rarely Missed Index(RMI)for the WMS-III Logical Memory subtest(Killgore & DellaPietra, 2000). V-DS misclassified 0%of individuals in the alcohol abuse group, 2%of those in the polysubstance abuse group, and 0%of head injury cases. RMI misclassification rates were 3%, 5%, and 7%for the alcohol abuse, polysubstance abuse, and head injury groups, respectively. Overall accuracy rates were 99%for V-DS and 95%for RMI.