The present study is an exploration of the personality assessment practices of clinical neuropsychologists. Professional members of the National Academy of Neuropsychology and the International Neuropsychological Society (N = 404) were surveyed to examine use of several forms of personality, behavior, and emotional function measures. Results…

Minimally verbal children with autism commonly demonstrate language dysfunction, including immature syntax acquisition. We hypothesised that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) should facilitate language acquisition in a cohort (n = 10) of children with immature syntax. We modified the English version of the Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT)…

Background: Evidence suggests that, as a group, patients with schizophrenia have intellectual deficits that may precede the manifestation of psychotic symptoms; however, how successfully intelligence tests are able to discriminate schizophrenia from other psychotic disorders has yet to be investigated in detail. Methods: Using Wechsler Adult…

Subtest specificities were determined for each of the 11 subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale--Revised (D. Wechlser, 1981) for a sample of 200 psychiatric inpatients. Seven subtests were judged to have adequate to ample specificity; four subtests were found to have inadequate specificity for ipsative interpretation. (SLD)

The Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test (MAST) was designed to serve as a reliable and quantifiable measure of alcohol dependence (M. Selzer, 1971). Since its introduction, the psychometric properties of the MAST have been studied extensively, but there are several questions that have not been addressed or only partially answered. The purpose of…

Examined the usefulness of the K-correction procedure to adjust for a defensive response set on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) with 61 patients being evaluated for lung transplants. Results support the use of the K-correction procedure for this patient group. Implications for MMPI use are discussed. (SLD)

The full version of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) (S. Heaton and others, 1993) was compared to a 64-card version (WCST-64) using normative data and results from 350 neuropsychological patients. The WCST-64 was found useful only for respondents obtaining five or more categories by the end of the first deck. (SLD)

Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised (WMS-R) scores were analyzed for 82 epilepsy surgery candidates and used in combination with receiver operating characteristic curves to classify patients with left (LTL) and right (RTL) temporal lobe seizure onset. Results indicate that WMS-R scores used alone or in combination provide relatively poor discrimination…

Analyzed Suicide Intent Scale using data from 98 psychiatric inpatients who had attempted suicide. Analysis resulted in two-factor solution: Lethal Intent factor contained items pertaining to subjective level of lethal intent; Planning factor contained items related to objective planning for attempt. Findings suggest that Suicide Intent Scale can…

The effectiveness of the Infrequency-Psychopathology Scale (P. Arbisi and Y. Ben-Porath, 1995) in discriminating between groups of patients administered the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory--2 under honest and fake-bad conditions was studied with 74 patients. Results support use of the scale in detecting malingering in psychiatric…

The ability of individuals with psychoactive substance use disorders to dissimulate successfully on the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) was evaluated with 236 adults from treatment, nonclinical, control, and forensically referred groups. Findings indicate that the PAI scales measuring drug and alcohol problems are susceptible to…

The Wechsler Memory Scale--Revised (D. Wechsler, 1987) and the Memory Assessment Scales (J. Williams, 1991) were administered to 30 head-injury patients, and results were compared across four dimensions of memory. Results suggest that these scales measure different abilities and are not comparable tests. (SLD)

A new qualitative scoring system for the Rey Visual Memory Test was tested for its ability to distinguish between malingerers and nonmalingerers. The new system, based on the types of errors made, was able to distinguish between 53 psychiatrically disabled and 64 normal nonmalingerers, and between nonmalingerers and 91 possible malingerers. (SLD)

Results from 344 college students and 129 psychiatric patients supported the effectiveness of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) Infrequency scale in detecting fake-bad responding and the usefulness of the MMPI-2 Obvious-Subtle index, Positive Malingering scale, and Lie scale in detecting fake-good responding. (SLD)

Studied the use of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory for Adolescents (MMPI-A) (J. Butcher and others, 1992) with 13-year olds by examining the profiles produced. Investigated the effect of scoring with standard MMPI-A norms. Findings support the use of standard MMPI-A norms with 13-year-old inpatients. (SLD)