Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina Charlotte, Charlotte, NC 28223-0001, USA.
Law Hum Behav. 2013 Jun;37(3):155-62. doi: 10.1037/lhb0000009. Epub 2012 Aug 20.
We address a gap in the literature on civil competency by examining characteristics of those who undergo civil competency evaluations and how well Managing Money and Health and Safety subscales of the Independent Living Scales (ILS) predict legal competency adjudications. We were also interested whether these subscales are more accurate in making such predictions than the Mini-Mental State Examination and Trail-Making Test, Parts A and B, well-known measures of neuropsychological functioning. Actual legal competency decisions were obtained from public court records on 71 individuals with either mental retardation/borderline intellectual functioning (MR/BIF) or psychiatric, neurological, or combined psychiatric or neurological diagnoses. We found that those with neurological diagnoses performed significantly better on the Trail-Making Test, Part A, than the MR/BIF and combined neurological and psychiatric groups, and they demonstrated trends in the same direction for other measures. Both ILS subscales performed better than the cognitive measures, in terms of both hit rate and predictive value, in predicting ultimate judicial decision-making about competency. These findings are particularly relevant for clinicians who must decide what measures to include in an assessment battery in civil competency evaluations.
我们通过考察接受民事能力评估的人群的特征以及独立生活量表（ILS）的管理金钱和健康与安全子量表在多大程度上预测法律能力裁决，解决了民事能力文献中的一个空白。我们还想知道这些子量表在做出此类预测方面是否比著名的认知功能测试——简易精神状态检查和连线测试 A 和 B 更准确。我们从公共法庭记录中获取了 71 名具有智力障碍/边缘智力功能（MR/BIF）或精神科、神经科或合并精神科或神经科诊断的个体的实际法律能力决策。我们发现，患有神经科疾病的个体在连线测试 A 上的表现明显优于 MR/BIF 和合并神经科和精神科组，并且他们在其他测试中也表现出了相同的趋势。就命中率和预测价值而言，ILS 两个子量表在预测最终关于能力的司法决策方面的表现均优于认知测试。这些发现对于必须决定在民事能力评估中包含哪些评估工具的临床医生尤其重要。
