Reexamining performance validity cutoffs within the Complex Ideational Material and the Boston Naming Test–Short Form using an experimental malingering paradigm

ABSTRACT

Objective: This study was designed to cross-validate previously published performance validity cutoffs embedded within the Complex Ideational Material (CIM) and the Boston Naming Test–Short Form (BNT–15).

Method: Seventy healthy undergraduate students were randomly assigned to either a control condition (n = 40) and instructed to perform to the best of their ability or an experimental malingering (n = 30) condition and instructed to feign cognitive impairment while avoiding detection. All participants were administered the same battery of neuropsychological tests.

Results: Previously published validity cutoffs within the CIM (raw score ≤9 or T-score ≤29) and BNT–15 (≤12) produced good classification accuracy using both experimental malingering and psychometrically defined invalid responding as criterion variable. However, a BNT–15 completion time ≥85 s produced a better signal detection profile than BNT–15 accuracy scores.

Conclusions: Results support the clinical utility of existing cutoffs. Given the relatively high base rate of failure even in the control group (5–15%), and the perfect specificity of CIM ≤9 and BNT–15 ≤ 11 to noncredible responding, relabeling this range of performance as “Abnormal” instead of “Impaired” would better capture the uncertainty in its clinical interpretation.

KEYWORDS:

• Boston Naming Test
• Complex Ideational Material
• embedded validity indicators
• Erdodi Index
• experimental malingering
• performance validity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This project received no financial support from outside funding agencies. Relevant ethical guidelines regulating research involving human participants were followed throughout the project. All data collection, storage, and processing were done in compliance with the Helsinki Declaration.