CNTRICS final task selection: social cognitive and affective neuroscience-based measures.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Psychiatry
• Clinical Psychology

Background:

• Schizophrenia treatment research aims to improve cognitive deficits, particularly in social and affective processing.
• Previous meetings identified emotion identification and responding as key areas for measurement development.

Purpose of the Study:

• To summarize the results and recommendations from the third Cognitive Neuroscience Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia (CNTRP) meeting.
• To identify and recommend priority tasks for measuring treatment effects on social and affective processing in schizophrenia.

Main Methods:

• A pre-meeting web-based survey nominated five candidate tasks for measuring emotion identification and responding.
• A criteria-based, consensus-building analysis was conducted on each nominated task.

Main Results:

• Two tasks were recommended for immediate translation: the Penn Emotion Recognition Task and Facial Affect Recognition and the Effects of Situational Context.
• These tasks measure emotion identification, emotional responding, and context-based modulation of emotional responding.

Conclusions:

• The Penn Emotion Recognition Task and Facial Affect Recognition and the Effects of Situational Context are priority tasks for developing measures of treatment effects.
• These measures are vital for assessing treatment efficacy on negative symptoms in schizophrenia.