iCogCA to Promote Cognitive Health Through Digital Group Interventions for Individuals Living With a Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorder: Protocol for a Nonrandomized Concurrent Controlled Trial (Preprint)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND Cognitive impairments are a key aspect of schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSDs), significantly affecting clinical and functional outcomes. The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened concerns about mental health services and cognitive stimulation opportunities. Despite evidence-based interventions like action-based cognitive remediation (ABCR) and metacognitive training (MCT), a research-to-practice gap exists in their application across mental health settings. OBJECTIVE The iCogCA study aims to address this gap by implementing digital ABCR and MCT through a national Canadian collaborative effort using digital psychological interventions to enhance cognitive health in SSDs. METHODS The study involves 5 Canadian sites, with mental health care practitioners trained digitally through the E-Cog platform, which was developed by our research group. Over 2.5 years, participants with SSDs will undergo pre- and postintervention assessments for clinical symptoms, cognition, and functioning. Each site will run groups annually for both ABCR and MCT, totaling ~390 participants. A nonrandomized concurrent controlled design will assess effectiveness design, in which one intervention (eg, ABCR) acts as the active control for the other (eg, MCT) and vice versa, comparing cognitive and clinical outcomes between the interventions using generalized linear mixed effect modeling. Implementation strategy evaluation will consider the digital platform’s efficacy for mental health care practitioners’ training, contextual factors influencing implementation, and sustainability, using descriptive statistics for quantitative data and thematic analysis for qualitative data. RESULTS A pilot pragmatic trial has been conducted previously at the Montreal site, evaluating 3 early implementation outcomes: acceptability, feasibility, and engagement. Patient and therapist acceptability was deemed as high and feasible (21/28, 75% of recruited service users completed therapy, rated feasible by therapists). Technology did not appear to significantly impede program participation. Therapist-rated levels of engagement were also satisfactory. In the ongoing study, recruitment is underway (114 participants recruited as of winter 2024), and intervention groups have been conducted at all sites, with therapists receiving training via the E-Cog learning platform (32 enrolled as of winter 2024). CONCLUSIONS At least 3 significant innovations will stem from this project. First, this national effort represents a catalyst for the use of digital technologies to increase the adoption of evidence-based interventions and will provide important results on the effectiveness of digitally delivered ABCR and MCT. Second, the results of the implementation component of this study will generate the expertise needed to inform the implementation of similar initiatives. Third, the proposed study will introduce and validate our platform to train and supervise mental health care practitioners to deliver these interventions, which will then be made accessible to the broader mental health community. CLINICALTRIAL ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05661448; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05661448 INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT DERR1-10.2196/63269
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.025 | 0.028 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.006 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.010 | 0.006 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.006 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.091 | 0.015 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".