The Importance of Symptom Validity Testing with Children: WMT and MSVT

Abstract: It is almost self-evident that cognitive test results will be unreliable and misleading if children do not make a full effort on testing. Nevertheless, objective tests of effort have not typically been used with children to determine whether test results are valid or not. Four cases are presented in which children’s intelligence test scores greatly underestimated their actual intelligence, owing to poor effort that sometimes went undetected. Selected effort tests for use with children are discussed. Objective testing of effort in children is recommended to avoid misinterpreting invalid test data, which is why the use of effort tests is now standard practice in forensic neuropsychology (Iverson, 2006). Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Lloyd Flaro in English (201, 17010 103 Ave.