Analysis of the dementia profile on the Medical Symptom Validity Test

The Medical Symptom Validity Test (MSVT) was administered as part of a neuropsychological battery to a mixed clinical sample of 286 consecutively referred individuals. Of the 47% of the sample who failed in the easy subtests, 48% were considered to have the "dementia profile." The remaining 52% of individuals failing the easy subtests were considered by the task to have "poor effort." Comparing the neuropsychological test performance among these three groups (Pass, Dementia Profile, Poor Effort) found that on most tasks those individuals passing the easy subtests of the MSVT perform significantly better than the other two groups, which did not differ from each other. Individuals meeting criteria for the Dementia Profile performed worse on tasks of motor functioning and list learning in comparison to the Poor Effort group. The results suggest that the algorithm creating a Dementia Profile does not effectively differentiate groups of individuals who fail the easy subtests of the MSVT. Consideration of a more liberal cutoff score for the easy subtests is offered.