Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

False Memories

False Memories

False memories represent a cognitive distortion in which individuals recall events that did not happen, or remember them in an altered form. This phenomenon highlights the brain's constructive nature in processing and recalling memories, emphasizing that memory is not a perfect representation of past events but rather a dynamic reconstruction influenced by various factors.
One primary source of false memories is misattribution, where individuals incorrectly associate external information...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

What It Takes in Contexts of Chronic Traumas: Designing Place-Based Programs for Social Capital, Community Resilience, and Economic Mobility.

Journal of community psychology·2026

Same author

Helping financially under-resourced unmarried mothers move forward and flourish: Feasibility findings from an innovative coaching-centered place-based initiative.

American journal of community psychology·2026

Same author

Where Is the Client in Client-Centered Care? Centering the Experiences of Integrated Care Among Black Women in Public Health Settings.

Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland)·2026

Same author

Interaction of neurological disorders and medical comorbidities is associated with an increased rate of incompetency adjudications.

Applied neuropsychology. Adult·2025

Same author

Psychometric properties and item evaluation of the life attitudes schedule: Short form: A novel measure of suicide proneness.

Death studies·2025

Same author

Racial Discrimination as a Traumatic Bedrock of Healthcare Avoidance: A Pathway Through Healthcare Institutional Betrayal and Mistrust.

Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland)·2025

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 3, 2025

Highlighting and Reducing the Impact of Negative Aging Stereotypes During Older Adults' Cognitive Testing

Highlighting and Reducing the Impact of Negative Aging Stereotypes During Older Adults' Cognitive Testing

Published on: January 24, 2020

Lowered cutoffs to reduce false positives on the Word Memory Test.

Martin L Rohling¹, George J Demakis², Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling²

¹Independent Practice, Charlotte, NC, USA.

Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology

|February 16, 2024

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Adjusting the Word Memory Test (WMT) scoring rules, specifically lowering the cut score and excluding the Consistency subtest, significantly reduces false positives while maintaining validity. This improves performance validity assessment in clinical evaluations.

Keywords:

Performance validity test Word Memory Test false negatives false positives invalid performance

More Related Videos

A Machine Learning Approach to Design an Efficient Selective Screening of Mild Cognitive Impairment

A Machine Learning Approach to Design an Efficient Selective Screening of Mild Cognitive Impairment

Published on: January 11, 2020

The Deese-Roediger-McDermott DRM Task: A Simple Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate False Memories in the Laboratory

The Deese-Roediger-McDermott DRM Task: A Simple Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate False Memories in the Laboratory

Published on: January 31, 2017

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Jul 3, 2025

Highlighting and Reducing the Impact of Negative Aging Stereotypes During Older Adults' Cognitive Testing

Highlighting and Reducing the Impact of Negative Aging Stereotypes During Older Adults' Cognitive Testing

Published on: January 24, 2020

A Machine Learning Approach to Design an Efficient Selective Screening of Mild Cognitive Impairment

A Machine Learning Approach to Design an Efficient Selective Screening of Mild Cognitive Impairment

Published on: January 11, 2020

The Deese-Roediger-McDermott DRM Task: A Simple Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate False Memories in the Laboratory

The Deese-Roediger-McDermott DRM Task: A Simple Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate False Memories in the Laboratory

Published on: January 31, 2017

Area of Science:

Neuropsychology
Psychometrics

Background:

The Word Memory Test (WMT) is a performance validity test (PVT) used to detect insufficient effort in cognitive assessments.
Minimizing false positives in PVTs is crucial for accurate clinical decision-making.

Purpose of the Study:

To adjust the WMT decision criterion to minimize false positives.
To identify an optimal cut score for the WMT using archival data.

Main Methods:

Archival data from 3,210 participants were analyzed.
WMT results were compared using original scoring rules versus adjusted rules based on the IR and DR subtests.
A criterion PVT (C-PVT) composite of 16 tests was used to estimate validity status.

Main Results:

Adjusted WMT rules (77.5% cutoff on IR/DR subtests) showed 80.8% agreement with the C-PVT criterion, an improvement of 12.1% over original rules.
The adjusted rules reduced false positives by 49.2% while maintaining 53.6% sensitivity.
The new rules yielded 88.8% specificity with an 11.2% false positive rate.

Conclusions:

Lowering the WMT correct responding cut score from 82.5% to 77.5% is recommended.
Discontinuing the use of the WMT Consistency subtest score for failure determination is advised.