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

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.