Special Abilities Assessment in Children

The faking-detection validity and incremental validity of response latencies to Minnesota Multiphasic Personality inventory (MMPI) items was investigated using an analog research design. One hundred undergraduates were assigned at random to five groups: each group received different faking instructions (standard, fake good, fake bad, fake good with incentive, fake bad with incentive). All subjects completed a computer-administered version of the MMPI. Content-determined response deviance scores and latencies of responses to Subtle and Obvious scale items were determined for each subject. The principal findings suggest that response latencies may have greater faking good detection ability than responses deviance scores, and that response latencies have statistically significant incremental validity for both the detection of faking good and faking bad, when latencies are used with response deviance scores obtained from Subtle and Obvious scales.