TY - JOUR PY - 2012// TI - The Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status Effort Scale JO - Archives of clinical neuropsychology A1 - Novitski, Julia A1 - Steele, Shelly A1 - Karantzoulis, Stella A1 - Randolph, Christopher SP - 190 EP - 195 VL - 27 IS - 2 N2 - The measurement of effort is now considered to be an important component of neuropsychological assessment. In addition to stand-alone measures, built-in, or embedded measures of effort have been derived for a limited number of standard neurocognitive tests. The Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) is a widely used brief battery, employed as a core diagnostic tool in dementia and as a neurocognitive screening battery or tracking/outcome measure in a variety of other disorders. An effort index (EI) for the RBANS has been published previously (Silverberg, N. D., Wertheimer, J. C., & Fichtenberg, N. L. 2007. An EI for the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS). Clinical Neuropsychology, 21 (5), 841-854), but it has been reported to result in high false positive rates when applied to patients with "true" amnesia (e.g., Alzheimer's disease). We created a new effort scale (ES) for the RBANS based on the observation of patterns of free recall and recognition performance in amnesia versus inadequate effort. The RBANS ES was validated on a sample of patients with amnestic disorders and a sample of mild traumatic brain injury participants who failed a separate measure of effort. The sensitivity and specificity of the new ES was compared with the previously published EI. Receiver-operating characteristic analyses demonstrated much better sensitivity and specificity of the ES, with a marked reduction in false positive errors. Application and limitations of the RBANS ES, including indications for its use, are discussed.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 0887-6177 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/arclin/acr119 ID - ref1 ER -