Malingering Intellectual Disability: The Value of Available Measures and Methods

Abstract

Atkins v. Virginia (2002) is a case that has changed the landscape in relation to the assessment of malingering in a legal context. This landmark decision abolished the death penalty for defendants found to have intellectual disability (ID; formally known as mental retardation), but limitations in our assessment techniques lead to questions regarding the veracity of ID claims. In fact, Justice Scalia noted with clarity that concerns exist regarding the ability of individuals to feign ID and to do so successfully. At the time of writing, little empirical research has been completed, but that which exists demonstrates an overall lack of validity for traditional measures of cognitive malingering for use with this population. This manuscript provides an overview of the utility of many of the traditional measures of malingering for use with an ID population and serves as a call for research in this very important area.

Key words:

• Atkins
• death penalty
• intellectual disability
• malingering
• mental retardation
• psychological assessment

Notes

¹For a comprehensive review of current effort test/indicator performance within mentally retarded and low IQ samples, please see Dean, Victor, Boone, & Arnold (2008) and Victor & Boone (2007).

²Of note, the same authors published a study in 1998 (Hales, Hale, & Gouvier, 1998) in which they support the use of these three measures in combination with the Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms (SIRS). This study will not be discussed in this section because the article does not provide enough information to evaluate the strength of their findings, nor the specificity rates for the Rey 15-Item, the DCT, or the M-Test alone. The study is discussed in the section on the SIRS.