The sensitivity of the Spontaneous Selective Attention Test (SSAT): a study of schizophrenic inpatients and outpatients versus normal controls.

The Spontaneous Selective Attention Task (SSAT) is a visual word-identification task that measures the type of selective attention that occurs spontaneously when there are multiple stimuli, all potentially relevant, and insufficient time to process each of them fully. The present study was designed to examine the sensitivity of the SSAT by comparing the performance of 40 schizophrenic inpatients and 30 schizophrenic outpatients to that of 70 normal controls. The pattern of results reported previously for schizophrenic inpatients versus normals was replicated, and these findings were extended to include schizophrenic outpatients in partial symptom remission. Schizophrenic inpatients and outpatients were just as accurate in identifying words as normals, but spontaneous selective attention under conditions of predictability was abnormal in both patient groups. Furthermore, the ability of the SSAT to discriminate between schizophrenic patients and controls was confirmed. A ratio measure of spontaneous selective attention had a sensitivity of 77% and a base rate of 9% in a normal population (when a cutoff value was set to minimize false positives and false negatives). Thus, the SSAT is a sensitive measure of an attentional phenotype that may be useful in genetic studies of schizophrenia.