Personal Injury Law

New Study on Word Memory Testing

By Bruce Stern

I have written several times in the past on the validity of Word Memory Testing in diagnosing and treating traumatic brain injuries. A new study calls into question statements continuously made by Paul Green that the SVT measures on the Word Memory Test requires minimal to no cognitive effort.  Reporting in this month’s issue of the Journal International Neuropsychological Society (2008), 14, 1074-1080, Batt et al., from the Department of Psychology McQuarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, measures the effect of distraction on the Word Memory Test (WMT) and Test of Memory Malingering (TOMM) performance in patients with a severe brain injury. 

According to the paper, the “research compares the performance of a sample of non-litigating participants with severe brain injury on both the WMT and TOMM under conditions of (1) full effort, (2) distraction, or (3) simulated malingering.”  The study included sixty participants with a severe brain injury.  The study revealed that while both tests demonstrated excellent sensitivity, the false positive rates for the WMT were significantly greater than those for the TOMM.  It was concluded that the so-called “effort” components of the WMT required more cognitive capacity than was previously believed.
 
In the discussion portion of the paper, the authors noted that the findings of those participants who failed the WMT had significantly lower estimated pre-morbid intelligence than those who passed, which further supported the notion that the WMT results are influenced by cognitive ability.  The authors also noted:  "In addition to this, false positives on the WMT were unacceptably high, which decreased the specificity of the test to unacceptable level."
 
The authors noted that this unacceptably high rate of false positives may not satisfy Daubert standards.

Full post as published by Traumatic Brain Injury Law Blog on November 13, 2008 (boomark / email).