B-69Neuropsychological Features of Civil Litigators and Criminal Offenders

Objective: The purpose was to determine neuropsychological performance across different types of forensic cases. Methods: Participants (n = 160) aged 18–71 (M = 39.15, SD = 12.52) were collected from an archived database of forensic neuropsychological assessment and are represented by four forensic domains: personal injury litigators (PI; n = 36), Social Security disability applicants (SS; n = 43), worker's compensation claimants (WC; n = 37), and death penalty inmates (DP; n = 44). Ethnicities represented were Caucasian (C; n = 91), African American (A; n = 15), and Hispanic (H; n = 54). Analyses involved a between-subjects design where ANOVAs and MANOVAs (and post hoc tests) of individual neuropsychological assessments and their domains included participant data from: Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale 3rd Edition (IQs and Indices); Wide Range Achievement Test (reading, spelling, arithmetic); Trail-Making Test parts A and B; Stroop Color-Word; Finger Tapping Test (dominant, non-dominant); Halstead Category Test; FAS; Hooper Visual Organization Test; Ruff 2 and 7 Test of Attention (speed, accuracy); and Beck Depression Inventory-II; also for the Rey-15 and Dot Counting tests of effort. Results: Significantly lower scores for DP were on measures of intelligence, verbal ability, memory and learning, executive functioning, and motor skills, and for H on measures of academic ability, verbal fluency, and attention. PI performed significantly higher on measures of intelligence, verbal learning, verbal ability, and executive function (refer to Table 1). WC showed the highest percentage of suspect effort in testing. Conclusions: The present findings support and extend prior literature.

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