Spatial serial order processing in schizophrenia.
The aim of this study was to examine serial order processing deficits in 21 schizophrenia patients and 16 age- and education-matched healthy controls. In a spatial serial order working memory task, one to four spatial targets were presented in a randomized sequence. Subjects were required to remember the locations and the order in which the targets were presented. Patients showed a marked deficit in ability to remember the sequences compared with controls. Increasing the number of targets within a sequence resulted in poorer memory performance for both control and schizophrenia subjects, but the effect was much more pronounced in the patients. Targets presented at the end of a long sequence were more vulnerable to memory error in schizophrenia patients. Performance deficits were not attributable to motor errors, but to errors in target choice. The results support the idea that the memory errors seen in schizophrenia patients may be due to saturating the working memory network at relatively low levels of memory load.
Department of Physiology, Institute for Neuroscience, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, 303 East Chicago Ave., Ward 5-132, Chicago, IL 60611, USA.
David
D
Fraser
Sohee
S
Park
Gina
G
Clark
Daniel
D
Yohanna
James C
JC
Houk
D000328:Adult; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology*; D039721:Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000150:complications* / Q000175:diagnosis; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D013028:Space Perception