Assessing believable deficits on measures of attention and information processing capacity

The vulnerability of tests of sustained attention and speed of processing to faked deficits was evaluated by comparing the performances of normal controls, healthy subjects asked to simulate deficits, and patients with closed head injury on a simple auditory reaction-time task and on the PASAT. The results revealed that persons attempting to feign the effects of brain injury perform more poorly than non-malingerers on a simple reaction-time task and the PASAT. The reaction-time task, however, proved more effective than the PASAT at detecting dissimulation, accurately classifying about 76% of the subjects. This value reflects a respectable hit rate for three-group classification.