| Summary: | 碩士 === 長庚大學 === 臨床行為科學研究所 === 93 === How to accurately detect malingerer is an important issue in clinical neuropsychology and medico-legal settings. Recently, a performance curve method based on choice reaction times has been proved to be very effective and sensitive in detecting the simulators of cognitive impairment. However, it is not known whether the performance on this task is also liable to be affected by different response styles or other factors.
The present study entails two experiments investigating the effects of different response styles and depression on the performance on this task, respectively. In Experiment 1, 32 university students matched with sex were recruited and randomly assigned to two different versions of the task, which consist of either letter or visual stimuli. All participants had to undergo four experimental conditions based on different testing instructions in order to elicit various response styles. In Experiment 2, there were 43 healthy volunteers and 39 patients fulfilled DSM-IV diagnostic criteria of major depressive disorder were recruited.
The results of Experiment 1 showed that different response styles tend to affect the performance on this task differently, but all these response styles can be easily dissociated by the quantitative indices of the task. In Experiment 2, compared to the control group, the performance of depressed patients on this task revealed steeper slopes of reaction time functions, but with lower error rates.
The possible mechanisms of the effects produced by different factors on the performance of this task will be discussed.
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