An interventional study of Motion Perception Task and Sine Wave Speech Task in Schizophrenia / Schizoaffective Disorder, SCHIZOPHRENIA 1 (Disorder) and Healthy Adult, sponsored by Washington University School of Medicine. Recruiting at 2 sites in United States. Open to participants aged 18 Years to 59 Years, including healthy volunteers. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2026-11-09.
Sponsored by Washington University School of Medicine · Not applicable, Interventional, and Basic science
In Study 3, all tasks and models from Aim 1 will be evaluated in a large community sample of online participants recruited through Prolific.
Aim 3 will establish 1) requirements for testing computational algorithms in population-based samples, 2) whether task length is optimal, and 3) whether computational parameters help predict psychopathology (hallucinations and delusions in particular) in the general population, and how these predictors may be impacted by demographic variables, such as race, ethnicity, gender, age and other social determinants of health.
Participant demographics will be matched to the U.S. Census 2023 American Community Survey (ACS) data release (updated as available). MPI MacDonald has successfully recruited large online samples for over a decade.
Specifically, researchers will recruit two samples of n=2,000 to preregister hypotheses and then n=3,000 to independently confirm those hypotheses. Multiple methods will affirm the highest quality human self-report and behavioral data for online samples.
Researchers use Prolific, which is known for high quality research participation, maintaining low levels of bots through strategies such as requiring a photo ID and a waiting period. Second, inclusion criteria will require an approval rating of 90-100% from previous researchers. Participants will complete three sessions, each limited to \~60 min to avoid burnout.
Researchers will recruit two samples of 2,000 to preregister hypotheses and then 3,000 to independently confirm those hypotheses.
Multiple methods will affirm the highest quality human self-report and behavioral data for online samples. First, researchers will use Prolific, which is known for high quality research participation, maintaining low levels of bots through strategies such as requiring a photo ID and a waiting period. Participants will complete 3 sessions, each limited to \~60 min to avoid burnout. Researchers anticipate complete data from 74% of participants, based on data completion rates in the previous online study.
General Cognitive Ability. Researchers will include standard general cognitive measures to assess the specificity of effects beyond general cognitive impairment. Specifically, researchers 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.
Self-Report Questionnaires: Researchers 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. Researchers will also use the Peters Delusion Inventory to assess the extent of delusional thinking, supplemented by the Green Paranoia Scale, which provides additional coverage of persecutory beliefs. To assess specificity, researchers will use the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) to assess depression, the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7)78 to assess anxiety, and the Motivation and Pleasure Scale-Self-Report (MAP-SR) to assess anhedonia and motivation with the addition of additional measures of psychosis (Aberrant Salience Inventory, Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire - Brief), alcohol use (AUDIT), cannabis use (Daily Sessions, Frequency, Age of Onset, and Quantity of Cannabis Use Inventory), and tobacco and other substance use (World Health Organization (WHO) Alcohol, Smoking and Substance Involvement Screening Test), as researchers will not have a Stuctured Clinical Interview (SCID) for on-line participants.
Researchers will also measure daily functioning using the World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule (WHODAS) 2.0. Validity questions and procedures will be included. These measures will take 30 mins to complete, as researchers found in prior studies. Researchers 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.
3,563 studies on the registry are indexed under Schizophrenia; 491 are open to participants now.
This study's planned enrollment of 10,000 is above the median of 71 across 2,944 interventional studies indexed under Schizophrenia.
Browse Schizophrenia studies →Washington University School of Medicine is the lead sponsor of 1,803 studies on the registry; 271 are open to participants now.
Of its 329 completed or terminated interventional studies of FDA-regulated products, 216 (66%) have results posted.
Counted across the registry records on this site, refreshed daily.
Go through the criteria one by one — yes, no or not sure — and take the list to your doctor or the study team. Kept in this browser only.
Exclusion Criteria:
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 ininstability 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 tovolatility
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
PDFs hosted by the registry, ClinicalTrials.gov.
Plan to share: Yes — Our plan is to share de-identified participant data through the National Data Archive (NDA) as required bythe National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Start is estimated for Dec 2026; primary completion for Jun 2031, 54 months later.
Of 753 non-industry interventional studies with no phase under Schizophrenia, half reached primary completion within 33 months of starting (the median), counting those still running; a quarter within 17 and three quarters within 56. This study's planned 54 months is above that.
Counting every sponsor, half of 766 studies reached it within 32 months; a quarter within 16 and three quarters within 56.
How these figures are worked out, and which studies are left out of them.
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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