Objective: Our study aimed to provide empirical evidence on the usefulness of one of the most popular neuropsychological tests, the Continuous Performance Test (CPT), as a marker of ADHD severity and presentations among adults. Method: ADHD participants were recruited in a specialized center for the diagnosis and treatment of adults suffering from ADHD ( n = 201). Measures included the CPT3™ and ADHD symptoms using a clinical interview and self-reported measures. Results: Only 51.7% of the participants were classified as likely to have a disorder characterized by attention deficit, such as ADHD, by the CPT. The relationships between CPT variables and ADHD symptoms were small. The classification error was 80.3% for the inattentive presentation and 22.5% for the hyperactive presentation when using the CPT to identify ADHD presentations. Conclusion: There was no evidence of the clinical utility of the CPT to assess or monitor ADHD in adult populations diagnosed and treated for ADHD.

The findings of partial association between dimensions of insight and measures of executive function supports the growing evidence that insight is a multidimensional phenomenon. Accordingly, they emphasise that in the framework of therapeutic interventions, enhancement of higher levels of insight needs to take into account that patients suffering from schizophrenia have differential impairment in insight dimensions.

No abstract

Insight impairment occurs commonly in patients with schizophrenia, and it can be expected that patients with impaired insight may subsequently have poorer psychosocial adjustment. The aim of the present study was to measure the relationship between insight and psychosocial adjustment in 38 inpatients with a diagnosis of DSM-IV schizophrenia. Insight was assessed using the Scale to Assess Unawareness of Mental Disorder. A comprehensive set of measures was used to assess psychosocial adjustment. No relationship was found between measures of psychosocial adjustment and insight. However, a self-rated measure of psychosocial adjustment was partially related to insight. Our results suggest that patients' insight levels may not be reliable predictors of the patients' level of psychosocial adjustment, and that these findings may need to be considered in continuous care of psychotic patients, in particular when outpatient care needs to be planned.

Our study supports the view that executive function is a heterogeneous construct with several subdimensions. Additionally, it suggests that symptom level has an important role as "rate limiting factor" on psychosocial adjustment and is partially mediated by executive dysfunction. Our results call for careful and detailed assessment in this patient population in order to establish appropriate treatment programmes such as cognitive remediation.