THE SUSTAINED ATTENTION TEST - A MEASURE OF ATTENTIONAL DISTURBANCE

The Sustained Attention Test is a vigilance task designed to assess th e ability of individuals with schizophrenia to sustain attention to vi sual stimuli. The task requires the subject to attend to two verticall y adjacent squares on a computer monitor. Each square changes color at random intervals. The subject's task is to respond when the two adjac ent squares become the same color. The resulting data provide a straig htforward assessment of sustained attention, and are not confounded by processes such as perceptual organization, working memory, or context processing, which are required by many other vigilance tasks. The Sus tained Attention Test had high test-retest reliability in a sample of chronic schizophrenia patients. In addition, test indices were strongl y correlated with Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test indices of immedia te memory span and total learning, and with learning and skill acquisi tion in a social skills training group. The Sustained Attention Test m ay be a useful tool for screening schizophrenia patients to determine who may be best able to attend to and learn new information in psychos ocial treatments. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.