Utility of abbreviated versions of the test of memory malingering in children with traumatic brain injury

Abstract

We evaluated the classification accuracy of two abbreviated versions of the Test of Memory Malingering (TOMM) in prediction of results on the full-length instrument in a sample of 126 children who were evaluated within 1–12 months after traumatic brain injury. Both a version based on administration of Trial 1 and a version based on administration of only the first 10 items of Trial 1 had acceptable specificity (i.e., > .90) and sensitivity (i.e., > .60) with regard to prediction of pass/fail results on the complete TOMM. Failure on the TOMM suppressed performance on measures of processing speed that were otherwise sensitive to severity of traumatic brain injury. We conclude that these abbreviated versions of the TOMM can be used in clinical practice with children with traumatic brain injury, at the discretion of the neuropsychologist.