TY - JOUR
T1 - Performance of patients with epilepsy or psychogenic non-epileptic seizures on four measures of effort
AU - Locke, Dona E.C.
AU - Berry, David T.R.
AU - Fakhoury, Toufic A.
AU - Cibula, Jean E.
AU - Schmitt, Frederick A.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank Chantel M. S. Dearth and Chris Miara for their help with data collection. Thank you to Christi Patten for her comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. This project was supported by the Epilepsy Foundation through the generous support of the American Epilepsy Society.
PY - 2006/9/1
Y1 - 2006/9/1
N2 - Exaggeration of cognitive symptoms or poor effort on cognitive testing has been addressed primarily in the traumatic brain injury literature. The present investigation aims to extend the evaluation of effort to the epilepsy monitoring setting, where base rates of failure on effort testing remain unknown for patients with intractable epilepsy (ES), psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES), or both conditions (ES+PNES). In addition, this investigation explores how well four measures of effort (DMT, LMT, TOMM, PDRT) distinguish between these diagnostic groups. Results show that 20% of the combined sample failed one or more effort measure. When examining failure rates for each diagnostic group, 22% of epilepsy patients, 24% of PNES patients, and 11% of ES+PNES patients performed suboptimally on one or more measure of effort. The utility of these effort measures to differentiate between these diagnostic groups appears limited. Further research is needed to clarify the base rate of poor effort in the epilepsy monitoring unit setting in general and in these three diagnostic groups specifically.
AB - Exaggeration of cognitive symptoms or poor effort on cognitive testing has been addressed primarily in the traumatic brain injury literature. The present investigation aims to extend the evaluation of effort to the epilepsy monitoring setting, where base rates of failure on effort testing remain unknown for patients with intractable epilepsy (ES), psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES), or both conditions (ES+PNES). In addition, this investigation explores how well four measures of effort (DMT, LMT, TOMM, PDRT) distinguish between these diagnostic groups. Results show that 20% of the combined sample failed one or more effort measure. When examining failure rates for each diagnostic group, 22% of epilepsy patients, 24% of PNES patients, and 11% of ES+PNES patients performed suboptimally on one or more measure of effort. The utility of these effort measures to differentiate between these diagnostic groups appears limited. Further research is needed to clarify the base rate of poor effort in the epilepsy monitoring unit setting in general and in these three diagnostic groups specifically.
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U2 - 10.1080/13854040590947380
DO - 10.1080/13854040590947380
M3 - Article
C2 - 16895866
AN - SCOPUS:33747095791
SN - 1385-4046
VL - 20
SP - 552
EP - 566
JO - Clinical Neuropsychologist
JF - Clinical Neuropsychologist
IS - 3
ER -