title: Objective measures of prospective memory do not correlate with subjective complaints in schizophrenia.
abstract: While a number of studies have shown that individuals with schizophrenia are impaired on various types of prospective memory, few studies have examined the relationship between subjective and objective measures of this construct in this clinical group. The purpose of the current study was to explore the relationship between computer-based prospective memory tasks and the corresponding subjective complaints in patients with schizophrenia, individuals with schizotypal personality features, and healthy volunteers. The findings showed that patients with schizophrenia demonstrated significantly poorer performance in all domains of memory function except visual memory than individuals with schizotypal personality disorder and healthy controls. More importantly, there was a significant interaction effect of prospective memory type and group. Although patients with schizophrenia were found to show significantly poorer performance on computer-based measures of prospective memory than controls, their level of subjective complaint was not found to be significantly higher. While subjective complaints of prospective memory were found to associate significantly with self-reported executive dysfunctions, significant relationships were not found between these complaints and performance on a computer-based task of prospective memory and other objective measures of memory. Taken together, these findings suggest that subjective and objective measures of prospective memory are two distinct domains that might need to be assessed and addressed separately.
authors.affiliation: Neuropsychology and Applied Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. rckchan@psych.ac.cn
authors.forename: Raymond C K
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Chan
authors.forename: Ya
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Zheng
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.forename: Xiao-hong
authors.initials: XH
authors.lastname: Hong
authors.forename: Yanbo
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.forename: Xin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: Zhanjiang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Shum
authors.forename: Qi-yong
authors.initials: QY
authors.lastname: Gong
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D033182:Intention; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011340:Problem Solving; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D012153:Retention, Psychology; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000175:diagnosis*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D012569:Schizotypal Personality Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D014706:Verbal Learning