Remediation of attention deficits in chronic schizophrenic patients: A preliminary study

Abstract

This study investigated the utility of cognitive retraining procedures in the treatment of schizophrenia. Twenty in‐patients were matched on reaction time and assigned to one of three groups: experimental‐treatment, attention‐placebo and no‐treatment control. Subjects participating in the experimental attention‐training programme exhibited significantly greater reaction‐time improvement than controls. The data suggest that practice on cognitive tasks can improve the attentional performance of chronic schizophrenic patients.