NCJ Number
152487
Journal
Criminal Justice and Behavior Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Dated: (December 1994) Pages: 443-453
Date Published
1994
Length
11 pages
Annotation
This study cross-validated the major findings of a previous study of mental-incompetence symptom validity tests and examined whether first-time offenders are less adept at feigning mental impairment than are inmates with a previous prison sentence.
Abstract
Male inmates were selected randomly from a large Texas maximum-security prison, with the qualification that each participant must have achieved a minimum score of 80 on the Revised Beta Examination. The 105 selected inmates ranged in age from 19 to 30 years. Of these inmates, 57 were first offenders, and 48 were repeat offenders. The instruments used were the General Knowledge Test, which was developed to detect the faking of low mental ability, and the Moral Reasoning Test, which was designed to detect the faking of an inability to distinguish right from wrong. The procedure duplicated that used by Hiscock et al. (1993). The inmates were assigned 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. 2 tables and 15 references