Assessing the Credibility of Clinical Presentations Using Performance and Symptom Validity Tests: Current Trends and Future Directions—Part II

Abstract

This editorial article introduces the second special issue of Psychology & Neuroscience devoted to performance and symptom validity testing. The reason for including the second special issue is that we received an unusually large number of high-quality submissions that could not fit into a single volume. The articles included in this second part offer practical, immediately actionable knowledge to assessors while simultaneously advancing the methodology for calibrating instruments designed to evaluate the credibility of a given clinical presentation. In this introduction, we briefly summarize each article and reflect on an emerging epistemological question about the interpretation of noncredible results in the context of a clinical research study: If a relatively large proportion of clinical patients fail a validity test without any apparent external incentives to appear impaired, should this be interpreted as a possible vulnerability of that validity test to false-positive classifications or as evidence that noncredible responding is relatively common outside of medicolegal/forensic assessments? Themethodological implications of symptom and performance validity research are discussed.