Kwansei Gakuin University
Report of Research Outcome
2020/03/19

To President
Department：
Position：
Name：

Graduate School of Humanities
Postdoctoral fellow
Robin Orthey

I report the outcome of the research as follows.
□Sabbatical leave with grantName of theFund/Prog ra m

□KGU Joint Research☑ Postdoctoral□Sabbatical leave with no grant□Individual Special Researchfell ow※ Please report by desi gnated f orm as f or “Inte rnational ResearchCollaboration”.

ResearchThe me
Research
Site/Venue

Reconstructing of emoti on concepts:

Innovation in psychological science

researchCenter f or Applied Psyc hological ScienceResearchperiod

2019/04/01

2020/03/31 （～12month）◆ Summary of the research outcome （ appr ox . 2 ,5 00 wo r ds）
Please write down the outcomes in detail regarding the research theme above.
My res earc h is aim ed at further developing the Forced Choice Test (FCT) to detect m alingeredc ognitive deficits and to investigate m alingerers` response strategies to avoid detection.
E xam ples of real-life applications include fraudulent claim s of working m emory disorders, tone
deafnes s , or crime am nes ia. The latter application of the FCT can also be used to determ ine
whether a s uspect in a crim inal investigation has knowledge about the crime that only theperpetrator c an have.
The proc edure of the FCT is best explained with a case of malingered working m em ory problems .
An e xam inee c laim s to suffer from the inability to rem em ber novel inform ation after a work accident.
Am ong other tests , a FCT would be applied to exclude m alingering. The FCT is m ade to look lik e agenuine work ing m em ory task. For exam ple, the exam inee would be presented with a num ber andas k ed to remem ber it. Then after a short delay the exam inee is presented with two num bers. Onenum ber is the one presented earlier and the other is a similar but unfam iliar num ber. Exam inees are
ins truc ted to select the num ber they were presented earlier and if they could not recall it, theys hould s im ply guess. This procedure is repeated m any tim es and a total score is com putedthat repr esents the num ber of tim es the correct ans wer was selected.

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E xam inees who genuine suffer from a working m em ory problem are unable to rem ember the correc t
ans wer and c an only guess. They have a probability of 50% to select the correct answer by gues singand their total score over the entire test is expected to fall within chance perform ance.
In c ontrast, exam inees who feign working m em ory problem s tend to select incorrect answers on
purpos e to `demonstrate` their im pairm ent , which leads to test scores considerably lower thanexpec ted by chance. This intentional avoi dance of correct answers is referred to as
underperform ance and used as criterion for malingered test performance.
In m y previous experim ents, I investigated the strategies m alingerers us e in this test. One notablefinding was that only a subsample of around 40% of m alingerers follows the traditionally assum edpattern. The rem ainder tends to understand the rationale of the FCT and c ounteracts byrandom izing between correct and incorrect answers over the course of the test. It follows that thenext s tep to increase the FCTs diagnostic acc uracy is to focus on this subgroup.
The purpos e of the current project was to investigate whether brain activity could be used as adiagnos tic m easure to distinguis h genuine from m alingered test performance. Participants brainac tivity was recorded with Electroencephalography (EEG). In this experim ent participants weres ubjec ted to a FCT about working m emory problems twice. Once they were instruc ted to perform tothe bes t of their ability and once to feign a cognitive disorder and randomize between correct andinc orrec t ans wers. In addition to the standard FCT procedure participants received feedback after
eac h c hoic e, indicating whether or not their choice was correct.
At three points of this procedure differences were e xpec ted to oc cur between genuine andm alingered perform ance. First, when partic ipants select incorrect answers on purpose as opposedto genuine m istakes. Ma king a m istake on purpose can be considered a deceptive response andprevious res earch suggests that deceptive responding elicits larger Medial Frontal Negativity (MFN)
following the response. Next, t wo differences could occur when processing feedback. During
feedbac k processing the Feedback Related Negativity (FRN) and P300 brain wave can be observed.
The FRN is the difference waveform between the processing of positive and negative feedback andnegative feedback typically lea ds to a m ore negative waveform . Participants were expected todis play a typic al FRN when they perform ed to the best of their ability. However, when participantsm ade mis tak es on purpose a sm aller FRN should be observed, because in the m istake wasintentional. Finally, the P300 brain wave is a m easure of attentional capture. A larger P300 wave
was e xpec ted when processing genuine feedback, because when participants m ade mistakes on
purpos e the outcom e was always known and therefore not surprising.
A preliminary sam ple of 27 undergraduate students was collected. Th ere were no differences in
MF N or FRN between conditions, but further exa m ination is required as the general form of bothwa ves was aberrant compared to previously published experim ents. The P300 am plitude differed
between c onditions, with larger am plitudes when participants perform ed to the best of their ability.
Furtherm ore, the difference between processing correct and incorrect feedback was also larger
when partic ipants did their bes t.
To es tim ate the diagnostic accuracy of the difference in P300 am plitude between correct andinc orrec t responses a Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve was com puted. The Area
Under the Curve (AUC) of the ROC can be seen as a general measure of detection accurac y. It
ranges between 0 and 1, and 0.5 repres ents chance perform ance. The aforem entioned P300
am plitude was associated with a m oderate diagnostic accuracy (AUC = .67).
The prelim inary results support that brain activity can be a useful addition to the d etection ofm alingered test performance , by identifying intentional random ization. It is likely that thes em eas ures provide increm ental validity to the traditional FCT c riterion as the underperformanc ec riterion has a poor detection accuracy for this res po nse strategy. Closer exam ination of the MFNand FRN and further replication of our findings is needed.

Deadline： W ithin two months af ter f inishing the research pe riod.
Sabbatical leave with grant: Sub mit this report t o President with conf irmation by the dean ofschool you belong to.
※ Postdoctoral f ellow is required to sub mit this report with conf irmation by the de an of graduate

school bef ore the end of emplo yment pe riod.
W here to submit： Orga nization f or Research a nd Develop ment and Ou treach (N UC)◆ W e put this report on t he web of KGU. If there is any proble m abo ut it because of diff iculties on
your research, please le t us know.
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