van Beilen Marije, Pijnenborg Marieke, van Zomeren Ed H, van den Bosch Robert J, Withaar Frederiec K, Bouma Anke
Department of Psychotic Disorders, P.O. Box 3007, GGZ-Drenthe, Assen 9400 RA, The Netherlands.
Schizophr Res. 2004 Aug 1;69(2-3):267-76. doi: 10.1016/j.schres.2003.09.007.
Schizophrenia patients perform below the norm on verbal fluency tests. The causes for this are unknown, but defective memory, executive functioning and psychomotor speed may play a role.
We examined 50 patients with schizophrenia and related disorders, and 25 healthy controls with a cognitive test battery containing tests for verbal memory, executive functioning and psychomotor speed, and a categorical fluency test.
Patients obtained significantly lower test results than the controls on most cognitive measures including the verbal fluency test. During the fluency test, they formed as many clusters, and switched as often between clusters as the controls did, but they generated fewer words per cluster. Interestingly, in the control group, fluency performance was predicted by memory and executive functioning, but not by psychomotor speed. In patients, verbal fluency was predicted by psychomotor speed, but not by memory or executive functioning.
We conclude that psychomotor speed could be a crucial factor in cognition, and its influence on cognitive test performance should be considered in schizophrenia research. Furthermore, these data illustrate the importance of qualitative analysis of cognitive impairments in schizophrenia patients, as traditional cognitive tests often only provide quantitative information.
精神分裂症患者在言语流畅性测试中的表现低于正常水平。其原因尚不清楚，但记忆缺陷、执行功能障碍和精神运动速度可能起到了一定作用。
我们对50例精神分裂症及相关障碍患者和25名健康对照者进行了检查，使用了一套认知测试组合，包括言语记忆、执行功能和精神运动速度测试，以及一项分类流畅性测试。
在包括言语流畅性测试在内的大多数认知测量中，患者的测试结果显著低于对照组。在流畅性测试中，他们形成的类别数量与对照组相同，在不同类别之间切换的频率也与对照组相同，但每个类别中生成的单词较少。有趣的是，在对照组中，流畅性表现由记忆和执行功能预测，而非精神运动速度。在患者中，言语流畅性由精神运动速度预测，而非记忆或执行功能。
我们得出结论，精神运动速度可能是认知的关键因素，在精神分裂症研究中应考虑其对认知测试表现的影响。此外，这些数据说明了对精神分裂症患者认知障碍进行定性分析的重要性，因为传统认知测试往往只提供定量信息。
