Behavioral Task Assessment for Schizophrenia

(CNTRACS 2 Trial)

In Study 2, investigators will recruit individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) and or schizoaffective disorder (SZA) and healthy controls (HC) using optimized behavioral tasks to replicate the behavioral findings from Study 1 and to assess additional psychometric properties such as test re-test reliability and practice effects.

Investigators will obtain data on: A) clinical symptoms, with detailed assessment of hallucinations and delusions; B) community functioning; and C) functional capacity, allowing us to examine clinical validity. To generate a sample with sufficient variation in hallucinations and delusions, investigators will recruit the following groups that balance feasibility with clinical relevance: A) healthy controls \[HC, N=125\]; B) schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder \[SZ/SZA, N=200\]). Investigators anticipate a \~20% screen fail/drop-out rate based upon prior studies. Thus, investigators will run an additional 40 SZ/SZA and 15 HC.

Investigators will administer tasks optimized in Aim 1 without electroencephalogram (EEG), to this new sample of individuals with SZ/SZA and HC.

All participants will be retested after approximately 28 days and repeat clinical assessments. Although the investigators' goal is to shorten task length using the Study 1 analyses, they will administer longer tasks than optimal for public dissemination in Study 2 to determine the minimum number of trials required for acceptable reliability. Study 2 will use the same clinical and functional measures as Study 1.