Assessment of Feigned Cognitive Impairment: A Neuropsychological Perspective by Kyle Brauer Boone (Editor)

Product Details

Synopsis

Comprehensive and user friendly, this book synthesizes the growing literature on symptom feigning in cognitive testing and translates it into evidence-based recommendations for clinical and forensic practice. A wide range of cognitive effort assessment techniques and strategies are critically reviewed, including both dedicated measures and the use of embedded indicators in standard clinical tests. The book describes approaches to distinguishing between credible and noncredible performance in specific clinical populations: persons presenting with head injury, chronic pain and fatigue, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and learning disability, mental retardation, seizures, and exposure to environmental toxins. Special topics include the potentially confounding effects of psychiatric disorder and ethnocultural factors on effort testing, and cognitive assessment in the criminal forensic setting.

Doody Review Services

Reviewer:Christopher J. Graver, PhD (Madigan Army Medical Center)
Description:The incidence of feigned cognitive impairment is much more rampant than was previously thought just a decade ago. Feigned cognitive impairment has dire implications in many arenas, including the legal system, school system, and even medical insurance and disability. This critical component of neuropsychological evaluations is the focus of the book.
Purpose:The purpose of this book is to present a host of symptom validity tests, summarize the literature on symptom validity testing, and provide empirically-supported recommendations for the use of these instruments in clinical and forensic examinations.
Audience:The book is aimed squarely at clinical neuropsychologists. The editor is an accomplished neuropsychologist and has made significant clinical and scholarly contributions to the field. The contributing authors are some of the most esteemed clinicians and researchers in this field.
Features:Although this book is filled with information about a multitude of symptom validity tests, it is well organized into relevant topics. An extensive section reviews the literature on many symptom validity tests organized by the type of instrument (e.g., forced-choice task, non forced-choice task, tasks embedded within other neuropsychological instruments) . This is followed by chapters that target specific clinical problems, rather than the instruments themselves. These chapters range from symptom validity testing in criminal forensic evaluations to the impact of psychiatric disease on symptom validity to feigned mental retardation. The topics are coveredin detail without compromising test security, which is commendable. Many of the chapters include relevant normative comparisons that are invaluable. The references are generally comprehensive and include studies as recent as 2006. The index is easy to use.
Assessment:This is an outstanding clinical reference that would benefit every neuropsychologist and student of neuropsychology. If one's goal is to be an informed, savvy evaluator of feigned cognitive impairment, there is no better resource on the market.

Biography

Kyle Brauer Boone, PhD, ABPP, is Professor-in-Residence in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, and Director of Neuropsychological Services and Training in the Department of Psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, California. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles in professional journals in the area of neuropsychological assessment and is a coauthor of Handbook of Normative Data for Neuropsychological Assessment. Dr. Boone has also published two tests used to assess for effort on neuropsychological exams: the b Test and the Dot Counting Test.