Malingering - Where people intentionally perform poorly to appear a certain way (ie. get diagnosed with a disability)

• To pretend to be disabled
• Used to be for physical disabilities — you'd get 30/40/50 years of government assistance
  • In order to get financial assistance, there’s an evaluation
• Last 20 years or so, people have realized that an LD would qualify them for assistance
  • Teller: First time they were evaluated for an LD is at age 17 instead of 8 or 9. This coincides with the period right before they were supposed to take the ACT or MCAT or so on
• Can’t prove that someone malingers, can only say that the evidence does not line up
• Increasing problem in LD field because of the increasing importance and volume of high stakes tests (tests that you should do well on which determine your future options)

TOMM (Test of Memory Malingering)

• Very easy task: average person scores 49.3/50
• Significant cognitive issues/intelligence disability: 43/50
• They flip cards of pairs and you say if you have seen them before
• Have seen very successful college students score 30 on that test — scoring lower than 90th percentile is a sign of malingering
  • Can’t prove it, but the implication is that they are malingering because they think it should be harder than it is. They try to look like they are disabled so they end up with a far, far lower score than people with real LD’s obtain.
  • Bad at faking bad — overdoing it 😕

Rating Questions

• Some have polar opposite questions (ie. I am happy all the time versus I am sad all the time)
  • Putting "Strongly Agree" for both or inconsistent answers calls into question the validity of the test results

Maybe AT MOST 10% of evaluators check for malingering. Many evaluators have past history that is inconsistent with these newly bad results, but just choose to ignore it and not make a comment on it.