National Psychology Training Consortium

Course Description and Target Audience

As malingering constitutes a test response style that is not infrequently seen when assessing examinees in forensic and/or neuropsychological practice, the goal of this course is to provide attendees with a general overview aimed at enhancing skills in recognizing this test response style when it occurs in psychological assessment. To accomplish this goal, the course specifically will explore a brief history of malingering, define the nature of malingering, and differentiate it from common masquerades, review its base rates across a variety of clinical settings, describe the psychometric properties that permit selection of effective malingering instruments, and illustrate the clinical interpretative process through use of a case study. Target audience: Mental health professionals who administer psychological assessments in clinical and/or forensic settings.

The materials to be presented are believed to be accurate as of the end of the first quarter of the year of this presentation (2024) and useful for effectively identifying malingering in examinees on testing in clinical settings based on reliance on much of the latest literature available at the time of the presentation. There are no known limitations. The presentation slides are comprehensive in nature, and not all slides will be addressed during the presentation. Rather, the slides were prepared to provide the attendee with a written resource that could be reviewed at needed. As the case study does involve sensitive discussion of the history and test results from an assessment of a sex offender of children, potential risk may include unwanted recollections from one's past should they have experienced such abuse.

Learning Objectives

• Participants will be able to briefly describe the history of malingering.
• Participants will be able to define malingering and differentiate it from its masquerades.
• Participants will be able to briefly describe the epidemiology of malingering and the significance of base rates in malingering detection.
• Participants will be able to describe in some detail the psychometric foundations underlying effective tests of malingering when selecting instruments for use.
• Participants will be able to provide a thorough discussion of a clinical case study illustrating the interpretation of test results in a case of malingered performance.
• Participants will be able to provide clinical material for later review and reference regarding the methods and strategies for detecting malingering used in test development and reference material for later review and use as a clinical aid in examining specific qualitative (behavioral observations) and quantitative (specific test findings) clues to a malingered test performance in a variety of psychometric tests.

Presenter Information

Michael R. Walsh, Psy.D has been a psychological services provider with assessment experience for 33 years, initially as an independent psychological examiner in Arkansas, and as a clinical psychologist in Missouri since 2010. In regard to his forensic neuropsychological assessment experience, from 1990 until 2009 while working for an Arkansas public community mental health center, he provided civil commitment evaluations, preemployment public safety evaluations, fitness for duty evaluations, social security disability evaluations, and psychosexual evaluations. Since 2010 while working for a private neuropsychological practice, he has provided sex offender evaluations to offenders at the request of the Missouri Department of Corrections. He has provided forensic neuropsychological evaluations on referral by patients, private attorneys, physicians, the Missouri Division of Workers Compensation, and the Missouri Public Defender System. He has provided decisional capacity (guardianship) evaluations, psychosexual evaluations, and criminal competency evaluations on referral by patients, private attorneys, and the Missouri Public Defender System. Further he has also provided criminal competency and mental health commitment evaluations on federal inmates referred by the U. S. Federal Public Defenders Office. At the present time, Dr. Walsh is employed by the United States Department of Defense assigned to the Keesler AFB in Biloxi, Mississippi where he serves as a Clinical Neuropsychologist for the Operational Support Team and for the Keesler Behavioral Health Clinic.

Live CE Training Location and Costs

Location

This presentation will be offered virtually through Zoom.

Registration Costs

This cost includes the training and materials required to obtain CE’s. Your CE certificate will be made available to you upon completion of the training. 

National Psychology Training Consortium (NPTC) is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. NPTC maintains responsibility for this program and its content.