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

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.