NCT03117452

Evaluation of a Visual Remediation Intervention for Schizophrenia

Status unknown NA Last updated 30 March 2018

What this trial tests

NA trial testing Visual Training in Schizophrenia in 40 participants. Status unknown.

Timeline

23 February 2017

Primary endpoint
28 February 2019

28 February 2019

Quick facts

Lead sponsor	Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Phase	NA
Status	Status unknown
Study type	INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation	randomized
Design	parallel
Masking	single
Primary purpose	treatment
Enrollment	40
Start date	23 February 2017
Primary completion	28 February 2019
Estimated completion	28 February 2019
Sites	1 location across United States

Drugs / interventions tested

• Visual Training

Conditions studied

• Schizophrenia — all drugs for Schizophrenia →

Sponsor

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Who can join

Adults 18 to 60, any sex, with Schizophrenia. Patients with the condition only — healthy volunteers not accepted.

Sponsor's own description

Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric condition that is associated with significant distress and disability. In addition to cognitive difficulties in domains such as attention, memory, and problem-solving, individuals with schizophrenia can experience visual-processing abnormalities, including impairments in visual acuity, low-contrast stimulus detection, and perceptual organization (i.e., perceiving visual information in an organized "perceptual whole"). These visual impairments are clinically significant, with research indicating that specific visual-processing alterations are significantly related to poorer performance on higher-level cognitive tasks, impaired facial emotion recognition, impaired reading ability, and worse functional outcomes. Despite such findings, very few studies have evaluated the therapeutic potential of interventions that are specifically designed to improve visual processing ("visual remediation") for individuals with schizophrenia. Thus the aim of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of a computerized visual perceptual training program that targets low- and mid-level visual processes to improve visual, cognitive, and emotion-recognition functions in outpatients with schizophrenia through a small randomized controlled trial. The investigators will recruit up to 40 individuals with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder who are receiving treatment in Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care (UBHC) Partial Hospital Program; half will be randomized to receive the computerized visual training, which will be delivered in small groups over a period of 12-14 weeks. The specific aims of this study are to collect preliminary data on: 1) the feasibility of participant recruitment and retention, and tolerability of the treatment components of the study; and 2) the efficacy of computerized visual training (VT) to improve low- and mid-level visual processes, and higher-level cognitive and social-cognitive performance. Based on preliminary data, the investigators hypothesize that the target number of participants will be successfully recruited and engaged in the VT intervention (n=16) and control condition (n=16), and that the participants who receive VT will demonstrate greater improvements on measures of low- and mid-level visual, higher-level cognitive, and social-cognitive functions compared to those who receive standard partial-hospital care without VT. The results of this initial trial will be used to inform the design and application for funding of a larger-scale investigation of visual remediation for individuals with schizophrenia.

Publications & conference data

No peer-reviewed publications indexed yet for this trial.