The Relational Trip Task, a novel ecological measure of relational memory: data from a schizophrenia sample.

Relational memory (RM) is severely impaired in schizophrenia. Unitisation can circumvent RM impairments in clinical populations as measured by the transverse-patterning (TP) task, a well-established measure of RM capacity. We compared memory performance on a new ecological RM measure, the Relational Trip Task (RTT), to that of TP at baseline and examined the effects of a unitisation intervention in RTT performance. RTT involves learning relational information of real-life stimuli, such as the relationship between people and places or objects. TP and RTT performances were examined in 45 individuals with schizophrenia. TP-impaired participants ( RTT and TP were moderately correlated. TP non-learners had inferior performance in RTT at baseline. Improvement in RTT performance after unitisation training was observed in the intervention group; no pre-post improvement was observed in the control group. RTT has an acceptable criterion validity and excellent alternate-form reliability. Unitisation seemed to be successfully generalized to support associations of real-life stimuli.