Neuropsychological performance and positive and negative symptoms in schizophrenia.

Examined cognitive functions in 11 positive-symptom (mean age 36 yrs), 10 negative-symptom (mean age 33.8 yrs), and 23 mixed-symptom (mean age 31.4 yrs) schizophrenics; 15 bipolar patients (mean age 34.7 yrs); and 12 normal controls (mean age 34.8 yrs) to explore the relation between symptoms and performance. Ss were administered a neuropsychological test battery including the Purdue Pegboard, the Revised Visual Retention Test, and the Block Design subtest of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale—Revised (WAIS—R). Group comparisons revealed generalized deficits in schizophrenics. Positive-symptom schizophrenics scored below normal Ss and negative-symptom Ss on 2 measures tapping verbal memory. Multiple regression analyses revealed that negative symptom ratings were inversely associated with performance on visual-motor tasks, whereas positive symptoms were inversely associated with verbal memory performance. Findings are not consistent with the notion that cognitive deficits are uniquely associated with negative symptoms. Instead, results suggest that there may be specific cognitive correlates of both the positive and negative symptom dimensions. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expectancies, mood, and performance of depressed and nondepressed psychiatric inpatients on chance and skill tasks.

The learned helplessness model of depression predicts that, compared with nondepressed patients, depressed patients will demonstrate psychomotor deficits, provide lower subjective evaluations of their performance, and perceive reinforcement in skill tasks as more response independent. These predictions were tested in 32 depressed (mean age 35 yrs) and 32 nondepressed (mean age 38 yrs) psychiatric inpatients, who had been administered the Quick Test and the Beck Depression Inventory. Ss performed card- and peg-sorting tasks in which measures of performance, ratings of mood and expectancy of success, and subjective evaluations of performance were obtained under chance and skill reinforcement conditions. Although some support was obtained for the prediction that depressives provide lower evaluations of their performance than nondepressives, the other predictions were not supported. Comparisons between depressed and nondepressed schizophrenics indicate that the mood of depressed schizophrenics was especially sensitive to task outcome for both skill and chance conditions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lexical cohesion and formal thought disorder during and after psychotic episodes.

Compared speech samples obtained from 10 schizophrenics (mean age 28 yrs), 11 manics (mean age 26.2 yrs), 11 schizoaffectives (mean age 25.8 yrs), and 10 normals (mean age 33.6 yrs) for the amount of lexical cohesion both within and between clauses. Two speech samples were obtained for each patient: one shortly after admission to a psychiatric hospital and another several weeks following discharge. All psychiatric patients showed evidence of formal thought disorder at admission, and all 3 groups showed a significant decline in the extent of thought disorder at follow-up. There were no differences between groups with regard to between-clause lexical cohesion at either point in time. Within-clause lexical cohesion did distinguish among the psychiatric groups at the 1st assessment interval; schizophrenics showed less within-clause lexical cohesion than the manics or schizoaffective patients. The manics and the schizoaffectives showed a significant decline in the amount of within-clause lexical cohesion from initial assessment to follow-up. The schizophrenics exhibited a modest decline in the amount of between-clause lexical cohesion. Results indicate that diagnostic differences in lexical cohesion depended on the specificity of the measure and suggest that there are subtle differences between the forms of verbal-communication impairment observed in schizophrenic and affective disorders. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Episodic memory functioning in a community-based sample of old adults with major depression: Utilization of cognitive support.

Community-based samples of old adults with current major depression (n?=?17; mean age 83.29 yrs) and healthy old adults (n?=?51; mean age 83.29 yrs) were examined on a variety of episodic recall and recognition tasks. Results indicate depression-related deficits in recall that were reduced but not eliminated, in recognition. Control Ss were able to utilize cognitive support in the form of more study time and item organizability in free recall, whereas depressed Ss were not. However, both groups showed equal gains from the provision of category cues and beneficial effects of prior knowledge and more study time in recognition. Results suggest that depression results in deficits in effortful, elaborate processes at encoding and retrieval and that old age depression is associated with a reduced ability to utilize cognitive support to improve episodic memory. Depressed older adults appear to require cognitive support at both encoding and retrieval to demonstrate memory facilitation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differential recovery of intellectual, associational, and psychophysiological functioning in withdrawn and active schizophrenics.

Recent research indicates that activity level in schizophrenics is related to probability of cerebral damage, neurophysiological functioning, severity of the schizophrenic episode, and level of premorbid adjustment. Withdrawn patients consistently appear more disturbed than active patients on these variables. The present study examined 15 withdrawn chronic schizophrenics (mean age 37.8 yrs) and 15 active chronic schizophrenics (mean age 40.2 yrs) who were evaluated on the Venables Activity–Withdrawal Scale within their 1st wk of hospitalization. Withdrawns recovered more slowly than actives across the 1st 5 wks of hospitalization in terms of intellectual, associational, and psychophysiological measures. The interaction of these various areas of functioning and their implications for clinical practice are discussed. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Selective attention in schizophrenic and manic psychoses: The effect of distraction on information processing.

Attempted to identify the general level of cognitive processing that is especially vulnerable to distraction in schizophrenia. The extent and nature of distraction were compared in 12 schizophrenic patients (mean age, 27.8 yrs), 12 manic patients (mean age, 28.2 yrs), and 12 controls (mean age, 26.7 yrs) using neutral and distractor word-span tests. Also, all patients were evaluated by the Nurse's Observation Scale for Inpatient Evaluation, and 10, 11, and 12 controls, schizophrenics, and manics, respectively, completed the MMPI. On one set of tests, serial position curves indicated that in the presence of distraction the overall deterioration in schizophrenics' performance reflected their tendency to forget early, and not late, items in the lists. On a 2nd set of tests, both schizophrenics and manics were abnormally distracted, regardless of the speed of presentation. Although the controls were also somewhat distracted by irrelevant words, their impairment was significantly diminished at slower rates of presentation. With distraction, schizophrenics and manics were less able to use the extra time in slow presentations for active mental operations such as rehearsal. Both groups made more intrusive errors than normal Ss. Results indicate that distraction interferes with schizophrenics' and manics' information processing at some level beyond the comparatively passive stages of recognition and sensory storage. Problems in selective attention seem to be more closely related to thought disorder than to diagnostic categories. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Encoding orientation and the remembering of schizophrenic young adults.

Schizophrenic memory following an experimenter-imposed encoding task was examined in a levels-of-processing framework. In Session 1, 17 schizophrenics (mean age 23.5 yrs), 17 nonschizophrenic psychiatric patients (mean age 24.3 yrs), and 17 normal college students (mean age 20.0 yrs) were required to make yes–no judgments about whether a probe word contained 2 letters, rhymed with a word, belonged to a conceptual category, or fitted into a sentence. In Session 2, they were required to produce an appropriate word for each question. The 3 groups recalled semantically processed words better than nonsemantically processed words and "yes" words better than "no" words and revealed similar recall and recognition patterns over the different levels of encodings. However, the schizophrenics' recall for "yes" words (Session 1) and for the self-generated words (Session 2) was inferior to that of normals. Theoretical implications are discussed. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Speech competence in manic and schizophrenic psychoses: The association between clinically rated thought disorder and cohesion and reference performance.

Compared 20 thought-disordered (TD) manics and schizophrenics (mean age 31 yrs) to 20 manic and schizophrenic patients (mean age 31.25 yrs) without thought disorder (NTD) and to 10 normal Ss (mean age 30.9 yrs) normal on the rating scales of cohesion and reference performance in speech developed by S. R. Rochester and J. R. Martin (1979). TD manics and schizophrenics differed from NTD Ss and the normal group in their more frequent use of unclear references as well as in their less frequent use of effective cohesion and reference strategies. Speech elements of the TD Ss were classified into disordered and nondisordered segments, and the same natural language analysis was completed for each category of speech segments. Nondisordered speech segments of TD Ss were quite similar to the overall speech performance of NTD Ss and the normal group. There were no cohesion or reference performance differences between TD manics and TD schizophrenics in their disordered speech segments. Findings are interpreted as validation of the usefulness of the Rochester and Martin rating system for identifying aspects of speech performance that are related to clinically rated thought disorder. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Defective interhemispheric transfer in schizophrenia.

Groups of schizophrenics, nurses, and psychiatric controls were trained to perform a manual shape discrimination task. The 20 schizophrenics included 17 outpatients and 3 short-term inpatients: 10 males (mean age 36 yrs) and 10 females (mean age 37.6 yrs). Nurse control Ss were 10 male (mean age 26.3 yrs) and 10 female (mean age 22 yrs) psychiatric nurses or student nurses. Psychiatric control Ss were 8 males (mean age 36.1 yrs) and 10 females (mean age 32.6 yrs). On both of the tasks included in the experiment, the schizophrenic group, but not the control groups, displayed defective intermanual transfer. The performances of the schizophrenics resembled those previously obtained with split-brain monkeys on similar tasks; therefore, it is concluded that the schizophrenics tested suffered from incomplete transfer of stereognostic shape information from 1 cerebral hemisphere to the other. Experiments suggesting poor interhemispheric transfer on auditory tasks in schizophrenics are discussed along with the possibility that certain schizophrenic symptoms are related to defective interhemispheric communication. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dependency and self-criticism: Psychological dimensions of depression.

Two independent types of experiences of depression have been identified among normals—dependency and self-criticism. Using the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire, this study investigates their utility in differentiating depression in patients. 197 patients (mean age 34 yrs) and 262 normal controls (mean age 26.7 yrs) also completed the MMPI, Beck Depression Inventory, and Self Rating Depression Scale. There were consistent differences among patients as a function of whether their experiences of depression focused primarily on issues of dependency and/or self-criticism or an absence of these issues. The subjective experiences around which an individual's depression focuses seem to provide a valid basis for differentiating among types of depression. Judges using case records were able to differentiate patients who were high on dependency or self-criticism, on both, or on neither of these dimensions. The distinction between these 2 different foci of depression may provide valuable differentiations for clinical research, and have important implications for the therapeutic process with different types of depressed patients. (55 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recognition and recall in amnesics.

Examined whether recall is disproportionately disrupted by amnesia compared with recognition, using 7 amnesics (mean age 51 yrs) without a history of alcoholism, 9 amnesic alcoholic Korsakoff syndrome patients (mean age 66 yrs), and 9 controls (mean age 53.2 yrs). It was postulated that if amnesia affects memory uniformly across different direct memory measures, recall of normal controls should not differ from the recall of amnesics when recognition scores of these 2 groups are equated. On the other hand, if recall is disproportionately disrupted, normal recall should be superior to amnesic recall even when recognition is equated. In the present study, amnesic recognition was equated with that of controls by providing amnesics with 8 sec of study time and normal Ss with 0.5 sec. Normal recall was superior to amnesic recall even when no differences were found in recognition. The results further specify the selective nature of amnesia. It is suggested that amnesia reflects a selective disruption of an aspect of memory critical to successful recall. (47 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mnemonic organization and free recall in schizophrenia.

Investigated word-storage structure and processes of organization and retrieval in 17 young schizophrenics (mean age 26.5 yrs) and 13 normal Ss (mean age 25.7 yrs). Ss were required to establish a stable organization of 25 unrelated words through repeated, self-paced sortings into self-determined categories. Subsequently, they were asked for free recall of the words. The schizophrenics required significantly more trials to complete the sorting task, but once this was achieved they recalled as many words in equally regular order as the normals did. The groups did not differ in regard to organizational structure in the sortings as assessed by hierarchical structure analysis. It is concluded that a schizophrenic deficit of mnemonic organization is indicated, possibly due to difficulties in maintaining a stable system of categories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Environmental determinants of memory improvement in late adulthood.

Conducted 2 studies with 99 nursing home residents (mean age ranges 76.2–80.7 yrs) to determine whether memory could be improved. This was accomplished by increasing the cognitive demand of the environment and then varying the extent to which Ss were motivated to attend to and remember these environmental factors. In Study 1, motivation to practice recommended cognitive activities was manipulated by varying the degree of reciprocal self-disclosure offered by interviewers in a series of dyadic interactions. In Study 2, motivation to practice recommended cognitive activities was manipulated by varying whether positive outcomes were contingent on attending to and remembering these activities, which increased in demand over time. In both studies, engaging in cognitive activity resulted in improvement on standard short-term memory tests, including probe recall and pattern recall, as well as in improvement on nurses' ratings of alertness, mental activity, and social adjustment for experimental groups relative to controls. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Changes in perceptual asymmetries with clinical improvement of depression and schizophrenia.

16 depressed patients, 16 schizophrenic patients, and 16 normal controls (20–50 yrs old) were given 2 dichotic listening tests and 2 cognitive tests at intervals ranging from patients' initial hospitalization to recovery. Repeated-measures ANOVA revealed that severely depressed Ss failed to obtain normal ear-superiority in either dichotic test; however, normal superiorities emerged with recovery from depression. Schizophrenic Ss initially failed to show normal right-ear superiority on a dichotic-words test but did obtain the expected left-ear advantage on a dichotic-chords test. Following treatment, schizophrenics shifted from a left-ear to a right-ear advantage in dichotic chords and also increased (although not significantly) their right-ear advantage in dichotic words. Both patient groups showed normal word-fluency but impaired spatial ability, which did not improve with recovery. Results suggest that both depression and schizophrenia are associated with a breakdown in the process of interhemispheric inhibition that mediates perceptual asymmetry. In depression, treatment returned Ss' normal patterns of asymmetry, whereas in schizophrenia, treatment created an abnormal pattern of asymmetry that may have reflected the allocation of both verbal and nonverbal material to the left hemisphere. (42 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Representational boundaries in role portrayals among paranoid and nonparanoid schizophrenic patients.

Studied the boundary properties of self and other representations in 31 normal Ss (mean age 18.8 yrs) and in 18 paranoid (mean age 21.2 yrs), 14 intermediate (mean age 21.9 yrs), and 16 nonparanoid (mean age 22.1 yrs) inpatient schizophrenics, using a dramatic role-playing technique. Role test and Rorschach responses were scored for presence of fluid and rigid boundaries between representations of human characters. Paranoid schizophrenics evidenced higher levels of rigid boundaries, nonparanoid schizophrenics had higher levels of fluid boundaries, and normal Ss showed fewer fluid or rigid boundaries. Rorschach and role test measures of boundary disruption were significantly correlated with each other and with other measures of psychopathology. Findings suggest that the relative balance between fluid and rigid representational boundaries is an effective discriminator of paranoid and nonparanoid subtypes and that the presence of either type of boundary imagery discriminates schizophrenics from normal Ss. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sentence perception and distractibility in schizophrenic, manic, and depressed patients.

Previous research with schizophrenics suggested that distraction may have its primary effect on controlled information processing. To explore this hypothesis, 8 schizophrenics, 8 manics, 8 depressives, and 8 normal Ss (all Ss were aged 18–45 yrs) were asked to shadow short stories in both the presence and absence of a competing message and to answer questions afterward about the content of the shadowed message. The shadowing performance of all 3 patient groups was equivalent to that of normal Ss and was not affected by distraction. Shadowing errors of commission indicated that schizophrenics did use semantic and syntactic information to anticipate words in the relevant message, but the schizophrenics also inserted more semantically irrelevant words than any of the other 3 groups. Distraction did interfere with the schizophrenics' ability to recall the content of relevant passages, but not with the performance of the other 3 groups. Data indicate that distraction may have a specific rather than general influence on controlled information processing or that distraction may reduce schizophrenics' overall capacity to handle information in short-term memory. The analysis of shadowing errors suggested that performance on such laboratory tasks may be closely related to the verbal communication problems encountered by many schizophrenic patients, but also that these symptoms may not be a simple function of selective attention difficulties. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Residual performance deficit in clinically remitted schizophrenics: A marker of schizophrenia?

The study of remitted schizophrenic outpatients is proposed as a way of minimizing the effects of the "nuisance variables" that confound the study of hospitalized schizophrenics. 20 hospitalized acutely disturbed schizophrenics (mean age, 37.0 yrs), 20 schizophrenic outpatients in clinical remission (mean age, 42.8 yrs) and 20 normal controls (mean age, 35.1 yrs) were administered a span of apprehension test and the Continuous Performance Test (CPT). All Ss were controlled for sex and WAIS scores and schizophrenics were rated with Phillips Prognostic Rating Scale. On the CPT, both acute and remitted schizophrenics made significantly more errors of omission and commission than did the normal controls. On the span of apprehension, both groups of schizophrenics showed a significantly greater decrement in accuracy of detection of the target stimuli than did normal controls. The same pattern of results has been observed in children at risk for schizophrenia, which suggests that the span of apprehension may be sensitive to core schizophrenic processes that are independent of clinical state. The cross-sectional study of the 3 stages of schizophrenia—the premorbid, acute, and remitted—is proposed as a way of identifying "core" schizophrenic processes and markers of vulnerability to schizophrenia. The adequacy of a general "attentional impairment" interpretation of schizophrenic deficit is questioned. (43 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Left hemisphere dysfunction and left hemisphere overactivation in schizophrenia.

Reports 2 experiments relating schizophrenia to functional brain asymmetry. In Exp I, 24 schizophrenics (mean age, 30.8 yrs) were compared to 24 matched controls (mean age, 37.3 yrs) on 2 tachistoscopic tasks (Syllable Test and Dot Location Test) designed to measure verbal and spatial information processing in the 2 hemispheres. Unlike the controls, the schizophrenics showed a right hemisphere superiority both on the verbal and on the spatial tests, indicating left hemisphere dysfunction in the initial processing of verbal information. In Exp II, lateral eye movements, as an index of contralateral hemispheric activation, were measured in a group of 24 paranoid schizophrenics (mean age, 28.9 yrs), 24 nonparanoid schizophrenics (mean age, 32.7 yrs), and 24 matched controls (mean age, 31.2 yrs). The eye movements were elicited by presenting the Ss with verbal neutral, verbal emotional, spatial neutral, and spatial emotional questions. The schizophrenics had significantly more rightward eye movement, compared to controls, regardless of question type, indicating left hemisphere overactivation. Results suggest that schizophrenia is associated with a pattern consisting of both left hemisphere dysfunction and overactivation. (63 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-reinforcement and recall: Differential deficits in depressed and nondepressed psychiatric inpatients.

16 depressed and 12 nondepressed psychiatric inpatients and 19 nondepressed hospital employees (18–60 yrs old) were administered the Beck Depression Inventory, Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression, and a verbal recognition task. Ss' administration and recall of self-reinforcements and self-punishments were assessed. As predicted, depressed Ss administered fewer self-reinforcements and a greater number of self-punishments than hospital employees; however, they did not differ on either of these measures from nondepressed patients. In terms of recall, depressed patients recalled giving themselves fewer reinforcements and a greater number of punishments than was actually the case. Whereas a low rate of self-reinforcement may be characteristic of global psychopathology, deficits in the recall of self-reinforcement and self-punishment were specific to depression. Results are discussed with reference to both cognitive and self-reinforcement conceptualizations of depression. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)