Cross-Validation of Two Measures for Assessing Feigned Mental Incompetence in Male Prison Inmates

Abstract

A pair of two-alternative forced-choice tests—one concerning general knowledge and the other concerning moral reasoning—were administered to male prison inmates who were assigned randomly to one of three experimental conditions: control, naive faking, and coached faking. The majority of inmates in the naive and coached faking conditions scored significantly below chance on at least one of the tests. No one in the control condition scored below chance on either test. When a cutoff score suggested by a previous study was used as the classification criterion, sensitivity increased modestly, but there was a corresponding decrease in specificity. First-time offenders did not differ significantly from inmates with previous prison terms. The data cross-validate the two tests as means of identifying individuals who are feigning a lack of mental competence.

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