Effort in College Undergraduates Is Sufficient on the Word Memory Test

A prior report found unusually high rates of performance validity test (PVT) failure in undergraduate research participants (31%-56%). The present study examined 110 undergraduate volunteers in three conditions (positive, neutral, or negative demand characteristics) in either an easy to hard or a hard to easy progression of neuropsychological tests using the Word Memory Test PVT. Neither demand characteristics nor test order had a substantial effect on test performance, and only a 6.4% failure rate was found on the PVT. These results suggest that neuropsychological testing experiments are completed faithfully by the vast majority of college undergraduates, although excluding the small number of participants failing PVTs would strengthen the internal validity of most studies.