Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
Schizophr Res. 2010 Feb;116(2-3):259-65. doi: 10.1016/j.schres.2009.11.002. Epub 2009 Nov 27.
Efforts to identify differential or core cognitive deficits in schizophrenia have been made for several decades, with limited success. Part of the difficulty in establishing a cognitive profile in schizophrenia is the considerable inter-patient heterogeneity in the level of cognitive impairment. Thus, it may be useful to examine the presence of relative cognitive weaknesses on an intra-person level. In the present study we examined the rates of significant intra-person differences between crystallized verbal ability versus five other cognitive abilities among 127 persons with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and 127 demographically matched normal comparison (NC) subjects. We found that the rates of significant discrepancies above the NC group base-rates was significantly greater in reference to those discrepancies involving visual memory relative to those associated with auditory memory, working memory, processing speed, and perceptual organization. The findings conflict with prior suggestions that working memory or auditory episodic memory are differential or core deficits in schizophrenia, and highlight the importance of considering visual memory in characterizing the cognitive effects of this condition.
几十年来，人们一直努力识别精神分裂症的差异或核心认知缺陷，但收效甚微。在精神分裂症中建立认知特征的部分困难在于认知损伤水平的患者间存在相当大的异质性。因此，在个体内水平上检查相对认知弱点的存在可能是有用的。在本研究中，我们检查了 127 名精神分裂症或分裂情感障碍患者和 127 名人口统计学匹配的正常对照组 (NC) 受试者中，晶体语言能力与其他五种认知能力之间存在显著个体内差异的比率。我们发现，与涉及听觉记忆的差异相比，与视觉记忆相关的差异与涉及工作记忆、处理速度和知觉组织的差异相比，差异率显著高于 NC 组的基础比率。这些发现与先前关于工作记忆或听觉情景记忆是精神分裂症的差异或核心缺陷的建议相矛盾，并强调了在描述这种情况的认知影响时考虑视觉记忆的重要性。
