Working memory impairments in schizophrenia: a meta-analysis.
Working memory (WM) deficit is a cardinal cognitive symptom of schizophrenia, but the differences among the tasks and measures used to assess WM make it difficult to compare across studies. The authors conducted a meta-analytic review to address 3 major questions: (a) Do patients with schizophrenia show WM deficits across diverse methodology; (b) Is WM deficit supramodal; and (c) Does the WM deficit worsen with longer delays? The results indicate that significant WM deficit was present in schizophrenia patients in all modalities examined. Increasing delay beyond 1 s did not influence the performance difference between schizophrenia patients and healthy control participants in WM. These results suggest that WM deficit in schizophrenia is modality independent and that encoding and/or early part of maintenance may be problematic.
Lee
Junghee
J
Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37240, USA. Junghee.Lee@vanderbilt.edu
Park
Sohee
S
D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology*; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000150:complications* / Q000503:physiopathology