P01-390 - Systematic Parametric Assessment of Attentional Functions Based on the Theory of Visual Attention II - Discriminating Malingerers from ADHD Patients

Abstract

In recent years the amount of adults claiming to have a neuropsychological disorder increased dramatically, raising the suspicion that some of them may malinger symptoms for secondary gain, such as receiving compensation or drugs. Hence, valid diagnostic tools in the assessment of neuropsychiatric conditions are of great interest. In our experiment, we investigated whether adults feigning symptoms of Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can be successfully detected by an assessment based on the ‘theory of visual attention’, namely TVA

[Bundesen, C. (1990). A theory of visual attention. Psychological Review 97, 523-547]. Therefore, we provided healthy adults with information about ADHD (available on the internet) and instructed them to feign symptoms on self-report scales, as well as on the whole report of TVA, which provides an quantitative, parametric measure of the affected and preserved attentional functions of ADHD adults. Our results show that malingerers were indeed able to feign symptoms on the conventional questionnaires, but not capable of imitating the specific response pattern on the whole report of TVA that ADHD patients show. We found a sensitivity of 80 % and a specificity of 93 % for the whole report of TVA. Beyond the detection of adults malingering ADHD, TVA may also help to identify adults feigning symptoms of other neuropsychological disorders.