Detection of malingering in psychic damage ascertainment

Malingering is the intentional feigning or exaggeration of physical or psychological symptoms. Since the beginning of 1900 malingering detection has been one of the main challenges in medico-legal practice and in particular in psychiatric and cognitive assessment, as behavioral symptoms are very easy to produce, so that the need for specific tools and strategies for malingering detection is crucial. Although several tools and strategies are available, conclusions are often derived from mere subjective impressions and in many cases they lead to misclassifications. Here we present a non-exhaustive review of strategies for the detection of malingering, starting from the logic underlying a qualitative analysis of symptoms, to validated tools specifically designed to detect attempts at simulating or exaggerating psychopathological, psychiatric or cognitive diseases. Finally, we describe two recent approaches to the malingering detection problem. These approaches are grounded on the analysis of the reaction-times and on the dynamic analysis of kinematic features of mouse trajectories while an examinee is answering to double-choice questions.