Insights from the examination of verbal and spatial memory errors in relation to clinical symptoms of patients with recent-onset schizophrenia.
BACKGROUND
Memory deficits in patients with schizophrenia (SZ) are considered as a key feature of the clinical manifestations of the disease. In order to further examine the role and nature of memory deficits in SZ, the pattern of errors in verbal and spatial serial recall tasks committed by SZ patients was compared to that of healthy controls. We also tested the relationship between these memory errors and clinical symptoms.


METHODS
Twenty-seven outpatients with recent-onset SZ and 27 age and gender matched healthy controls had to remember sequences of items (digits or localisations) in a serial recall task. Clinical symptoms were assessed with the PANSS and the SAPS.


RESULTS
The results indicate that the number of omissions, intrusions, and transpositions can differentiate patients with SZ from healthy controls. Intrusions and transpositions committed in the verbal domain were associated with the negative subscale of the PANSS. Transposition errors were associated with delusions whether the to-be-remembered information was verbal or spatial.


CONCLUSIONS
The examination of the pattern of errors, in particular that of transpositions, is a more informative cognitive index than the mere analysis of overall performance, and provides a promising target for treatment.
Cellard
Caroline
C
Universite Laval, Quebec, Canada. caroline.cellard@crulrg.ulaval.ca
Tremblay
Sébastien
S
Lefébvre
Andrée-Anne
AA
Laplante
Louis
L
Achim
Amélie M
AM
Bouchard
Roch-Hugo
RH
Roy
Marc-André
MA
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007361:Intelligence Tests; D008297:Male; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000150:complications / Q000503:physiopathology*; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D018579:Patient Selection; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000150:complications / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D012691:Serial Learning / Q000502:physiology; D012720:Severity of Illness Index