Paul B. Ingram

Purpose of Review: Over-reporting is a form of response bias involving the exaggeration or fabrication of symptoms and impairment. Symptom validity tests (SVTs), including standalone measures and validity scales embedded within broadband personality inventories, are commonly used to assess over-reporting. Recent SVT development has increasingly emphasized symptom-domain specificity, including cognitive, somatic, and psychological presentations. This review examines current advances and challenges in symptom validity assessment, with particular attention to whether over-reporting indicators demonstrate meaningful domain-specific distinctions. Recent Findings: Evidence regarding symptom-domain specificity remains mixed. Although some findings suggest that SVTs may differentially detect particular symptom presentations, other research indicates that these measures generally perform within a common range of over-reporting effects and do not consistently demonstrate the expected relationships between symptom domain and assessment context. To further evaluate these distinctions, we re-analyzed data from an independent meta-analysis of MMPI-2-RF over-reporting validity scales and conducted a random-effects meta-analysis of interscale correlations among MMPI-2-RF over-reporting indicators reported across the empirical literature. Across these complementary analyses, over-reporting indicators demonstrated substantial similarities in performance despite their proposed domain distinctions. Summary: Current evidence raises questions about the degree to which symptom-domain distinctions among over-reporting indicators reflect meaningfully separable constructs. Greater attention to construct definition, criterion selection, comparative scale performance, and multivariate patterns of responding is needed to determine when domain-specific interpretations are empirically warranted. Methodological and analytic improvements in these areas may strengthen the construct validity, clinical utility, and interpretive precision of symptom validity assessment.

The purpose of this paper is to define and describe impairment from the perspective of theHierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP). This work is intended to establish afoundation for the development of a system for assessing impairment to complement HiTOPmeasures of psychopathology. We define impairment as the direct or indirect impact ofpsychopathology that is not itself part of psychopathology, involving (a) difficulty achievingimportant and reasonable personal goals and/or (b) direct or indirect interference with the goalsof others. We articulate seven specific assessment features of a HiTOP-optimal impairmentmeasurement approach and, having found no existing measures with all seven features in areview of the literature, sketch a prototype approach using a case example and outline a planfor generating a suite of tools for assessing impairment from a HiTOP perspective.

The purpose of this investigation is to provide descriptive information on veteran response styles for compensation and pension (C&P) evaluations Veterans Affairs (VA) referral types using the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2-Restructured Form (MMPI-2-RF), which has well-supported embedded validity scales capturing invalid response styles. The total sample included 356 veterans from a single VA psychological testing clinic who were administered the MMPI-2-RF during a broader psychological evaluation, with 201 veterans undergoing C&P evaluations. This study examines frequencies of protocol invalidity based on the MMPI-2-RF's validity scales and provides comprehensive descriptive findings on validity scale scores across appointment types (i.e., C&P and non-C&P). Three distinct trends emerged: (1) Veterans generally produced valid MMPI-2-RF profiles, (2) when more than one elevation emerges, it is likely to be thematically consistent (e.g., overreporting scales), and (3) overreporting generally captured the highest frequency of validity scale elevations relative to underreporting or noncontent-based invalid responding. Implications and limitations for practice and the utility of the MMPI-2-RF within VA testing clinics are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Adolescence is a developmental period where executive functions differentiate and mature. Prior research suggests that transdiagnostic processes - i.e. mechanisms that serve as risk or maintaining factors of psychopathology - negatively impact adolescent executive functioning both concurrently and over time. Understanding how these processes and executive functioning are assessed and interrelated can help neuropsychologists make more accurate diagnostic and treatment recommendations. This study aimed to identify concurrent and longitudinal correlates between adolescent executive functioning and transdiagnostic processes, including emotion regulation, affect, and Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) spectra (i.e. higher-order symptom domains like internalizing, externalizing, and somatic symptoms), using a multi-informant, multi-method design. We assessed 100 adolescents using behavioral, self- and parent-reported measures of these transdiagnostic processes and executive functioning across two time points. Effect sizes of unadjusted, bivariate correlations were examined. Performance-based executive functioning did not correlate with self- or informant-reported executive functioning. Cross-informant agreement, however, was often evident for executive function tasks at small effects. While patterns of correlations generally differed across the assessment approaches and informants, negative affect and externalizing symptoms consistently showed small associations with concurrent executive functioning. Affective demands (e.g. emotion regulation difficulties, internalizing symptoms, negative affect) were negatively associated with concurrent executive functioning, suggesting that such burdens may compromise adolescents' performance on executive tasks. Clinicians are encouraged to evaluate internalizing symptoms contemporaneously with executive function testing, and to attend carefully to adolescent - informant relationships and disclosure dynamics. Implications for multi-method, multi-informant approaches to adolescent assessment are discussed.