Neuropsychological (NP) functioning in first episode (FE) schizophrenia: A 2-year follow-up study

ION AND WORKING MEMORY IN SCHIZOPHRENIA including Raven’s Progressive Matrices and the Making Groups Test. A total of 23 schizophrenia patients from the MPRC Outpatient Research Program and 20 normal controls were studied. Patients demonstrated deficits on both simple storage and more complex forms of working memory (all p 0.46). The results suggest that the cause of the WM impairment in schizophrenia is at least 2-fold: (1) there are limitations on how much information can be held on line and (2) there are additional limitations in how much of this information can be used in the service of more complex D.C. Glahn, T.D. Cannon, R.E. Gur, J.D. Ragland, R.C. Gur Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA cognitive operations. Abstraction, the ability to use information to group stimuli in some meanineful wav. has lone been considered an area of differential cognitive deficit in schizophrenia, primarily because of patients’ poor performance on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). However, patients’ deficits on the WCST may also be attributable to the working memory requirement of the test. In the current study, a new task was designed to investigate the relationship between abstraction and working memory in schizophrenia. The primary element of the task measures abstraction. In another condition, a working memory requirement is suuerimnosed on this module. A benefit of this naradigm MEMORY DYSFUNCTION IN FIRSTSEVERITY AND SELECTIVITY OFion, the ability to use information to group stimuli in some meanineful wav. has lone been considered an area of differential cognitive deficit in schizophrenia, primarily because of patients’ poor performance on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). However, patients’ deficits on the WCST may also be attributable to the working memory requirement of the test. In the current study, a new task was designed to investigate the relationship between abstraction and working memory in schizophrenia. The primary element of the task measures abstraction. In another condition, a working memory requirement is suuerimnosed on this module. A benefit of this naradigm MEMORY DYSFUNCTION IN FIRSTSEVERITY AND SELECTIVITY OF EPISODE SCHIZOPHRENIA RX Goldman, J. Bates, R.M. Bilder, G. Reiter, J. Conley, E. Pappadopulos, M. Obuchowski, D. Robinson, J.M.A. Alvir, J. Lieberman, N. Schooler . _ . is that it can be used to determine whether deficits in working memory add to or multiply abstraction deficits in schizophrenia. In this study, patients with schizophrenia (n = 30) were Psychiatry Research, Hillside Hospital, PO Box 38, Glen Oaks, imnaired in their abstraction ability comnared with demogranhNew York 11004, USA icaily similar controls (n = 30); a working memory load affected patients’ abstraction performance, but to a degree equivalent to that seen in the controls. These findings suggest that a working memory load adds to, rather than interacts with, an abstraction deficit in determining patients’ performance on neuropsychological tests such as the WCST. WORKING MEMORY IN SCHIZOPHRENIA: IMPAIRMENTS IN STORAGE AND PROCESSING Neurocognitive studies in schizophrenia demonstrate generalized dysfunction, with relatively greater deficit in memory Using procedures for identifying amnesia in neurologic populafunction. Most studies however, have been conducted in tions (Squire 1986), patients were considered to have specifically patients of mixed chronicity and differing clinical states. We sought to determine the selectivity and severity of memory dysfunction, as well as its relationship to functional outcome, in first-episode patients (n = 88). Patients were evaluated while clinically stable (6 months following initial treatment), such that neurocognitive deficits are unconfounded with illness state. J.M. Gold, V.N. Iannone, C. Queern, R. W. Buchanan Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, Department of Psychiatry, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland21228. USA Patients with schizophrenia demonstrate impairments on a range of working memory (WM) tests. We explored: (1) whether these impairments involve both simple storage capacity (forward span) and more complex WM functions (Letter-number sequencing, Alphabet Recoding); (2) whether patient-normal control differences on complex WM tasks are mediated by simple storage deficits; and (3) the relationship of simple and complex WM tasks to fluid reasoning measures, severe memory disturbance if their memory performance was 15 points below their Full Scale IQ, as well as 2 standard deviations below normal. Using this conservative criterion, 28% of clinically stable patients demonstrated severe memory dysfunction. This is a large percentage considering the relative youth of the sample (25.7 k 6.3 years). We then determined the extent to which memory dysfunction is predictive of longerterm social vocational outcome (Social Adjustment Scale). Severe memory impairment impacted most negatively on general adjustment outcome (t (62) =2.1, p ~0.05). The present study suggests that schizophrenia results in severe memory dysfunction in almost one third of new-onset cases despite successful treatment, and this impairment deleteriously impacts functional outcome.