EFFECTS OF ATTENTION TRAINING ON INFORMATION-PROCESSING IN SCHIZOPHRENIA

This study evaluated the impact of a cognitive retraining intervention designed to enhance the attention skills of schizophrenia patients. T he dependent variables included measures of perceptual sensitivity and sustained vigilance derived from a visual continuous performance test , as well as visual span of apprehension and word-list recall. Sixteen subjects received approximately 15 hours of repeated practice with co mputer-mediated vigilance tasks. Seventeen subjects were assigned to a no-treatment control group. All subjects were rated on measures of ne gative and positive symptoms before treatment. Despite improved perfor mance on the training tasks, no significant changes on the outcome mea sures were observed following treatment. Thus, it is suggested that co gnitive rehabilitation interventions with schizophrenia patients stres s the teaching of behavioral strategies that bypass deficits, rather t han remediating deficiencies in basic abilities, such as attention.