Verbal Learning and Memory Enhancement Strategies in Schizophrenia: A Randomized, Controlled Investigation.

Objectives: Verbal episodic memory is a key domain of impairment in people with schizophrenia with close ties to a variety of aspects of functioning and therapeutic treatment response. A randomized, blinded trial of two mnemonic strategies for verbal episodic memory deficits for people with schizophrenia was conducted.

Methods: Sixty-one people with schizophrenia were assigned to one of three experimental conditions: training in a mnemonic strategy that included both visualization and narrative structure (Story Method), a condition in which participants were trained to visualize words interacting with one another (Imagery), or a non-trained control condition in which participants received equivalent exposure to training word lists and other verbal memory assessments administered in the other two conditions, but without provision of any compensatory mnemonic strategy.