Center on Autobiographical Memory Research, Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences, Aarhus University, Denmark.
Inserm U1114, Strasbourg University, University Hospital of Strasbourg, France.
Schizophr Res. 2021 Feb;228:89-96. doi: 10.1016/j.schres.2020.12.013. Epub 2021 Jan 9.
Patients with schizophrenia show severe autobiographical memory impairment, thought to reflect retrieval deficits caused by executive dysfunction. However, prior research has focused exclusively on strategic (voluntary) retrieval, and ignored involuntary retrieval resulting from automatic and associative processes, involving minimal cognitive control. We report two studies with patients diagnosed with schizophrenia (Ns = 40 and 50 respectively) comparing their impairment in involuntary versus voluntary autobiographical memory. We use two different methodologies, not previously used in schizophrenia research: a naturalistic study involving real-life data and an experimental setup. Both studies consistently showed that involuntary and voluntary autobiographical memories were similarly impaired in schizophrenia. The absence of interaction effects between group and retrieval suggests that schizophrenic patients did not benefit from memory tasks involving little retrieval effort. These findings suggest that autobiographical memory impairment in schizophrenia are not caused by problems with self-initiated voluntary retrieval, but instead likely reflect encoding or binding deficits.
精神分裂症患者表现出严重的自传体记忆障碍，这被认为反映了执行功能障碍导致的检索缺陷。然而，先前的研究仅关注策略性（自愿）检索，忽略了由自动和联想过程引起的无意识检索，这些过程涉及最小的认知控制。我们报告了两项针对精神分裂症患者的研究（分别为 40 名和 50 名患者），比较了他们在无意识和自愿自传体记忆方面的损伤。我们使用了两种不同的方法，这些方法以前在精神分裂症研究中没有使用过：一种是涉及真实数据的自然主义研究，另一种是实验设置。这两项研究都一致表明，精神分裂症患者的无意识和自愿自传体记忆都受到同样的损害。组间和检索之间没有交互作用表明，精神分裂症患者没有从涉及较少检索努力的记忆任务中受益。这些发现表明，精神分裂症患者的自传体记忆障碍不是由于自我启动的自愿检索问题引起的，而是可能反映了编码或绑定缺陷。
