An interventional study of Motion Perception Task and Sine Wave Speech Task in SCHIZOPHRENIA 1 (Disorder), Schizo Affective Disorder and Healthy Adult, sponsored by Washington University School of Medicine. Not yet recruiting at 5 sites in United States. Open to participants aged 18 Years to 59 Years, including healthy volunteers. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2026-10-23.
Sponsored by Washington University School of Medicine · Not applicable, Interventional, and Basic science
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.
Each participant will complete 3 sessions (\~3 hours each) within 3 weeks at baseline. The first session includes clinical, self-report, proxy function, and community function assessments. Sessions 2-3 are for task. Each participant will complete 7 tasks across these sessions. Task order will be counterbalanced across sessions. Participants will return after 28 days and repeat these same 3 sessions.
Clinical Assessment and Self-Report: A trained assessor will diagnose participants using the Structured Clinical Interview (SCID-5) for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-5) Text Revision 59 (TR59). Clinicians will rate hallucination and delusion symptom severity with the Chicago Hallucinations Assessment Tool (CHAT) and the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS). Investigators will use the Psychotic Symptom Rating Scales (PSYRATS) to evaluate the degree of preoccupation, conviction, distress, and life disruption associated with hallucinations and delusions elicited on the BPRS and CHAT. To address specificity, investigators will administer the Clinical Assessment Interview for Negative Symptoms (CAINS). For self-report, investigators will use the Beliefs about Voices Scale which assesses attributions about the origin and power of voices, and the Yale Control Over Perceptual Experiences (COPE) scale, which evaluates the extent to which people feel they can exert control over their voices. Investigators also will use the Peters Delusion Inventory to assess the extent of delusional thinking, supplemented by the Green Paranoia Scale to provide additional coverage of persecutory beliefs. To assess specificity, investigators will use the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) to assess depression, the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7) to assess anxiety, and the Motivation and Pleasure Scale-Self-Report (MAP-SR) to assess anhedonia and motivation. Investigators will conduct a principal components analysis (PCA) on measures of the same construct (e.g., delusions) and perform primary analyses using the first principal component, followed by secondary analyses of specific measures False Discovery Rate (FDR) correction.
Community Function: Patients will complete the Specific Levels of Functioning (SLOF) scale, a validated scale of work and community function. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Common Data Elements: Investigators will acquire the additional NIMH Tier 1 Common Data elements (e.g., World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule 2 (WHODAS 2.0) \& DSM-5 Symptom Measure). Investigators will include standard general cognitive measures to assess the specificity of effects beyond general cognitive impairment. Specifically, investigators will include validated online measures from TestMyBrain (https://www.testmybrain.org/using-tmb/research.html; Digit Symbol Coding, Vocabulary, and Matrix Reasoning), as in our prior work in both clinical and healthy populations.
1,655 studies on the registry are indexed under Psychotic Disorders; 298 are open to participants now.
This study's planned enrollment of 325 is above the median of 68 across 1,358 interventional studies indexed under Psychotic Disorders.
Browse Psychotic Disorders studies →Washington University School of Medicine is the lead sponsor of 1,795 studies on the registry; 271 are open to participants now.
Of its 330 completed or terminated interventional studies of FDA-regulated products, 216 (65%) have results posted.
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General Inclusion
Group Specific Criteria: Schizophrenia/SchizoaffectiveDisorder (SZ/SZA):
Exclusion Criteria:
Healthy Controls (HC):
additional exclusion criteria for the unmedicated individuals are:
Assesses updating of beliefs from new sensory inputs with prior knowledge via perceiving direction changes in random dot motion stimuli
Measures the degree to which overweighting of prior beliefs impacts processing of sensory inputs (detection of speech).
Measures the updating of priors about the location of a bag drop from a helicopter when the location changes (prediction errors).
Assesses prior belief updating when feedback about obtaining positive outcomes changes (prediction errors).
Examines the role of mismatches between learned priors and new information (prediction errors) in belief formation about event causes.
Assesses the degree to which people distinguish between their priors about others' motivations, such as selfishness and spite, and impersonal chance in one-shot trust game and dictator games.
Assesses degree to which people learn and update priors about trusting partners from dynamic social feedback (prediction error) in a social exchange game.
Motion Perception Task Performance
With 15 degrees of initial or changed direction vs. the probability of failing to update
Time frame: 1 hour
Sine Wave Speech Task Performance
Percentage of trials coded as speech or not vs Dprime
Time frame: 1 hour
Volatility Task Performance
Percent correct bag captures during periods of stability vs. instability - patients worse in both, but particularly impaired in instability vs. Environmental volatility belief parameter
Time frame: 1 hour
Choice Probabilistic Reversal Performance Task
Win-switch rate (higher in patients, particularly paranoid patients) vs. (prior on volatility belief updating in response to volatility
Time frame: 1 hour
Kamin Blocking Task Performance
Number of times participant predict allergy following blocked cue vs. prediction errors and learning rates
Time frame: 1 hour
Minnesota Trust Game Performance
Percent of trusting choices depending on decision-agent and temptation vs. spite-guilt beliefs estimate
Time frame: 1 hour
Dynamic Trust Game Performance
Trust indexed by mean investment versus learning rates
Time frame: 1 hour
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Plan to share: Yes — Our plan is to share de-identified participant data through the National Data Archive (NDA) as required by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
From the registry record's own update history. This site started tracking changes on Sep 25, 2026; for anything earlier, see the record history on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗
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