Performance on a Computerized Shopping Task in Bipolar Disorder and Alcohol Dependency

Persons diagnosed with bipolar disorder and alcohol dependency are frequently subject to cognitive impairments and encounter difficulties during everyday life activities. However, little is known how these deficits interact in real life. Moreover, previous studies have primarily used questionnaires or observational methods to assess everyday life functioning, both of which contain a number of limits. In order to address some of these limits, we developed a computerized real-life activity task, in particular, a shopping task where participants are required to shop for a list of 8 grocery store items in a virtual supermarket. Twenty individuals diagnosed with alcoholic dependence and 21 patients diagnosed with bipolar disorder were compared with healthy controls (20 and 21, respectively), matched for age, sex and educational level. All participants completed the shopping task, and both clinical groups were evaluated with an extensive battery of cognitive tests (assessing executive functioning, attention, processing speed and memory), clinical scales and a measure of real world functioning. Results showed that, for both clinical groups, performance on the computerized shopping task significantly differentiated patients and healthy controls for a number of variables, especially total time to complete the shopping task. Performances on shopping task variables, in both clinical groups, were also significantly correlated with cognitive tests measuring processing speed, episodic memory, cognitive flexibility and inhibition. Finally, performances on the computerized shopping task were significantly correlated with real world functioning in both patient groups. These findings suggest that the computerized task used in the present study provides a valid indication of the level of real world functioning for these clinical populations, and therefore may be viewed as a valuable instrument in both an evaluation and remediation context.