Development of a virtual supermarket shopping task for cognitive remediation of memory and executive functions in schizophrenia

Adela Plechata*, Iveta Fajnerova, Lukas Hejtmanek, Vaclav Sahula

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingArticle in proceedingsResearchpeer-review

6 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Impairment of executive and memory functions was repeatedly observed in various neuropsychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia. As the pharmacological treatment does not influence the deficit sufficiently, the significance of cognitive remediation increases in importance. The presented study introduces the virtual Supermarket Shopping Task (vSST), a novel method aimed at memory and executive functions, designed in ecologically valid environment. The results of the first pilot study showed significant difference in the performance between the males and females. In the second pilot, the difference between males and females was eliminated subsequently to adding other items besides groceries to the shopping list. The debriefing of participants pointed out the importance of elected encoding strategy. Considering adjustable parameters that allow us to increase the task difficulty and complexity, vSST represents potentially well-adjustable remediation method.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2017 International Conference on Virtual Rehabilitation, ICVR 2017
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Publication date10 Aug 2017
Article number8007514
ISBN (Electronic)9781509030538
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 10 Aug 2017
Event2017 International Conference on Virtual Rehabilitation, ICVR 2017 - Montreal, Canada
Duration: 19 Jun 201722 Jun 2017

Conference

Conference2017 International Conference on Virtual Rehabilitation, ICVR 2017
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityMontreal
Period19/06/201722/06/2017
SeriesInternational Conference on Virtual Rehabilitation, ICVR
Volume2017-June

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
III. CONCLUSSION These findings support the idea of utilization vSST as remediation tool in patients with neuropsychiatric disorders, especially with SZ. It is in accordance with the previous studies using virtual shopping task [7]. A short debriefing with the ACKNOWLEDGMENT This study was supported by the projects Nr. LO1611 with a financial support from the MEYS under the NPU I program, and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports under Project Contract no. MSMT-28477/2014, project 7F14236.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 IEEE.

Keywords

  • cognitive deficit
  • memory
  • remediation
  • strategies
  • virtual reality

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