Rossell S L, Shapleske J, David A S
Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, London.
Psychol Med. 1998 Sep;28(5):1189-98. doi: 10.1017/s0033291798007120.
A sentence verification task was developed to investigate semantic memory in schizophrenia.
The test consisted of three types of sentence (true, unlikely and nonsense) and seven different types of content (neutral, persecutory, grandiose, political, religious, relationships and somatic) representing common delusional themes present in schizophrenic patients. Sixty-three schizophrenic patients and 66 matched control subjects were asked to make true/false judgements to 143 sentences.
Overall accuracy was similar across the two groups; sentences with some emotional themes and sentences of the unlikely type produced the most violations. Significant differences between the two subject groups were found specifically on nonsense sentences with persecutory and religious themes. Patients made significantly more incorrect responses (acceptance) to nonsense sentences that had an emotional content congruent with their delusional beliefs, past or present, and also on unlikely sentences (incorrect rejections) whose content was not congruent with their delusions. Further analysis of response bias in the patients showed, overall, that there were more incorrect rejections (a reflection of the large number of unlikely sentence errors) and more incorrect responses to sentences congruent with patients delusions. Furthermore, analysis of those patients currently experiencing delusions revealed more incorrect responses to sentences congruent with their delusional ideas compared with patients not currently deluded.
These findings are indicative of cognitive bias in schizophrenia towards certain emotional themes that may underlie illogical semantic connections and delusions.
开发了一个句子验证任务来研究精神分裂症患者的语义记忆。
该测试由三种类型的句子（真实句、不太可能的句子和无意义句）以及七种不同类型的内容（中性、被害妄想、夸大妄想、政治、宗教、人际关系和躯体）组成，这些内容代表了精神分裂症患者中常见的妄想主题。63名精神分裂症患者和66名匹配的对照受试者被要求对143个句子做出真/假判断。
两组的总体准确率相似；带有一些情感主题的句子和不太可能类型的句子产生的错误判断最多。在两组受试者之间，在带有被害妄想和宗教主题的无意义句子上发现了显著差异。患者对情感内容与他们过去或现在的妄想信念一致的无意义句子做出了明显更多的错误反应（接受），对内容与他们的妄想不一致的不太可能的句子（错误拒绝）也做出了更多错误反应。对患者反应偏差的进一步分析总体显示，错误拒绝更多（反映了大量不太可能的句子错误），对与患者妄想一致的句子的错误反应也更多。此外，对目前正在经历妄想的患者的分析显示，与目前没有妄想的患者相比，他们对与自己妄想观念一致的句子做出了更多错误反应。
这些发现表明精神分裂症患者对某些情感主题存在认知偏差，这可能是不合逻辑的语义联系和妄想的潜在原因。
