NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF ATTENTION AND ITS PATHOLOGY IN THE ISRAELI COHORT

We assessed attention in 63 of the 98 traceable living subjects of the original 100 in the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) joint study of schizophrenia by the United States and Israel, known as the I sraeli High-Risk Study cohort; their mean age was 32 years. These data were supplemented, for comparative purposes, with those obtained on 3 1 normal control and 17 schizophrenia subjects studied at NIMH. The re sults suggest that attention skills of the adult children of a parent with schizophrenia fall between those of schizophrenia patients and co ntrols, and that measures of sustained attention and the ability to fo cus and execute provide the best discrimination among groups. Post hoc analyses revealed that poor scores on simple tests of attention obtai ned in childhood were associated with the development of disorders in adulthood. Low scores on a digit cancellation test at age 11, but not at age 17, predicted which of the children at genetic risk would devel op schizophrenia spectrum disorders diagnosed at ages 26 and 32.