University of Toronto Scarborough, 1265 Military Trail, Scarborough Ontario.
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 250 College Street, Toronto Ontario.
Psychiatry Res. 2021 Jan;295:113528. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2020.113528. Epub 2020 Oct 23.
While it is well established that individuals with schizophrenia exhibit a wide range of neurocognitive deficits, there is significant heterogeneity in this regard. Impairments in verbal fluency appear to present consistently across most individuals with the illness. The present study examined the stability of verbal fluency abilities in chronic schizophrenia longitudinally. It was hypothesized that semantic but not phonemic verbal fluency performance would be stable over one year. Data was extracted from a larger study that followed 53 outpatients (70% male; mean age = 39.2 years) diagnosed with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. At each testing interval (baseline, 6, and 12 months), the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia was administered, which included phonemic (i.e., F, S) and semantic (i.e., animals) verbal fluency tasks. No significant differences were found across time points for semantic and phonemic verbal fluency with respect to mean number of words generated, clustering, and switching. The findings provide evidence of stability in semantic and phonemic verbal fluency abilities in chronic schizophrenia. Moving forward, it would be valuable to examine verbal fluency performance longitudinally across multiple stages of illness (i.e., clinically high-risk to chronic schizophrenia).
虽然已经确定精神分裂症患者表现出广泛的神经认知缺陷，但在这方面存在显著的异质性。在大多数患有这种疾病的人中，流畅性言语似乎始终存在缺陷。本研究从纵向角度探讨了慢性精神分裂症患者流畅性言语能力的稳定性。假设语义流畅性而不是语音流畅性在一年后保持稳定。该数据是从一项更大的研究中提取的，该研究随访了 53 名门诊患者（70%为男性；平均年龄为 39.2 岁），他们被诊断患有精神分裂症或分裂情感障碍。在每个测试间隔（基线、6 个月和 12 个月），都进行了简短的精神分裂症认知评估，其中包括语音（即 F、S）和语义（即动物）流畅性任务。在语义和语音流畅性方面，无论是生成的单词数量、聚类还是切换，在各时间点之间均未发现显著差异。这些发现为慢性精神分裂症患者的语义和语音流畅性能力的稳定性提供了证据。展望未来，在疾病的多个阶段（即临床高风险到慢性精神分裂症）中，对流畅性言语表现进行纵向研究将具有重要价值。
