FUNCTIONAL SKILLS TRAINING
FUNCTIONAL SKILLS TRAINING
Computerized Functional Skills training in Older People with Schizophrenia
Harvey et al. ACNP Skills Training Poster Presentation (2016)
ACNP Skills Training Poster Presentation
Computerized Functional Skills training in Older People with Schizophrenia
SUMMARY
Cognitive enhancement with pharmacological or remediation strategies is a topic of major interest in severe mental illness. Despite success in enhancing cognitive performance, these intervention strategies have not been shown to improve their distal target of everyday functioning without additional skills-based interventions. In many locations, however, there is no availability of psychosocial interventions, leading us to develop a technology-based skills training system and testing its efficacy in this study.
Computerized skills training without a human trainer significantly improved functional capacity in healthy older people and people with schizophrenia. These results suggest that computer delivered functional skills training can improve functional capacity and that this intervention may be an important adjunct to pharmacological or remediation focused cognitive enhancement, with a goal of improving everyday outcomes through a combination of improved cognitive functioning and improvement of functional capacity.
