Cognitive experimental approaches to investigating impaired cognition in schizophrenia: a paradigm shift.

There has been a growing interest in cognitive deficits in schizophrenia in recent years. The use of traditional clinical neuropsychological measures of cognition in schizophrenia has the advantages of normative data and standardized administration, and remains the standard for cognitive assessment in clinical practice. However for the investigation of cognition in schizophrenia these methods have critical limitations in their ability to measure specific cognitive processes. In this paper we discuss solutions to these interpretive and measurement issues that can be provided by measures derived from experimental cognitive psychology. We suggest that the use of these measures will increasingly become the preferred approach to the investigation of the nature, neurobiology and genetics of impaired cognition in schizophrenia in the coming years.