Assessment of motivation and memory with the Recognition Memory Test after financially compensable mild head injury

Warrington's Recognition Memory Test (RMT) was used in the assessment of memory and motivation in a study of 63 adult subjects. Subjects reporting mild head trauma who claimed disability and were seeking financial compensation (MT-Comp) obtained significantly lower scores on both subtests of the RMT than subjects with moderate and severe brain trauma (ST) and subjects with mild head injuries who had returned to work (MT-Work). Of the MT-Comp, 47% and 29% scored below chance on the Faces and Words subtests, respectively, compared to 10% and 6% in ST group and 0% and 0% in the MT-Work group. A discriminant function that consisted of both RMT subtests discriminated between the MT-Work and MT-Comp groups with an overall accuracy of 93%.