Reduced top-down influences in contour detection in schizophrenia.

Introduction: Chronic schizophrenia patients have previously demonstrated performance deficits in contour integration tasks. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether schizophrenia patients, spanning a range of illness severity, would demonstrate responsiveness to manipulations that recruit top-down processing strategies involving learning and sequencing effects in a contour integration task.

Methods: We administered a contour integration test over four consecutive days and in two different presentation conditions each day.

Effectiveness of a two-phase cognitive rehabilitation intervention for severely impaired schizophrenia patients.

Background: Several small-N, uncontrolled reports have demonstrated that the behavioral technique of attention shaping has significantly increased attention span among severely ill schizophrenia patients.

Method: In this study, we evaluated the effectiveness of using an individually administered intervention for improving sustained attention, Attention Process Training (APT), followed by an attention-shaping procedure within the context of an ongoing skills training group. Patients were randomly assigned to receive either the APT and attention-shaping sequence (n = 18) or equivalent hours of treatment in the same intensive behavioral rehabilitation program (n = 13).