Persisting negative symptoms and information-processing deficits in schizophrenia: implications for subtyping.
To test the hypothesis that schizophrenic patients with persisting negative symptoms have stable information-processing impairments compared with schizophrenic patients without persisting negative symptoms, 20 chronic schizophrenic outpatients were trichotomously subgrouped on the basis of the level of negative symptoms that they displayed across multiple rating periods over a 1-year period. Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale assessments of negative symptoms were used to assign subjects into either an operationally defined persisting negative symptom (PNS), transient negative symptom (TNS), or no negative symptom (NNS) subgroup. The level and pattern of these subgroups' performance on a visual information-processing task, the Span of Apprehension Test (SPAN), were compared. Although the three groups did not differ statistically in level of SPAN performance during a drug-free baseline, the PNS group had significantly poorer SPAN performance than the other two groups at the 1-year followup assessment. The SPAN performance of the TNS and NNS groups improved while the SPAN performance of the PNS group did not improve over the 1-year followup period.
Castellon
S A
SA
Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, USA.
Asarnow
R F
RF
Goldstein
M J
MJ
Marder
S R
SR
D000328:Adult; D010054:Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008606:Mental Processes; D011379:Prognosis; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology