Student Nova Southeastern University College of Psychology Hollywood, Florida, United States
Objective: A frequently used standalone performance validity test (PVT) is the Test of Memory Malingering (TOMM), which utilizes two or three visual recognition trials to assess for suboptimal participant effort. In situations with limited time, shortened evaluation times are preferred. One method for this is to look at the error rate on the first 10 TOMM items (TOMMe10) for predicting invalid performance. The objective of this review is to investigate the utility of TOMMe10 in adult neuropsychological evaluations, including potential cutoffs. Data Selection: A systematic review of available literature was conducted using the PubMed database. The following keywords were used during the search: “TOMM first 10 items” and “TOMMe10.” Eight out of eleven articles were found to have met the inclusion criteria for this review, which required the study to speak to cutoffs used and to the effectiveness of TOMMe10 at predicting performance validity with adults on the TOMM or other validated assessments. Data Synthesis: All eight studies demonstrated adequate sensitivity, specificity, and discriminability of TOMMe10 for invalid performance, with all but four supporting a cutoff of ≥2 errors. Three proposed a cutoff of ≥1 error, while one proposed a cutoff of ≥3 errors. Both alternate cutoffs demonstrated adequate predictive power.
Conclusions: This research demonstrated that TOMMe10 could accurately predict invalid PVT performance, except in cases of severe memory impairment. Optimal TOMMe10 cutoff results were mixed but a cutoff of ≥2 errors was the most supported. Future research could assess the utility of the various suggested TOMMe10 cutoffs in specific situations.
