Objectives:The memory function and it’s impairment in patients with schizophrenia have recently gathered more interests nowadays. Recent researches have investigated the relationship between memory function and symptoms of schizophrenia, even by dividing them into positive and negative symptoms. It is proposed, in patients with schizophrenia, that the positive symptoms are related to the inability to monitor internally produced symptoms, while the negative symptoms are likely due to the deficit in memory response, that results in a failure to respond. The object of this study is to investigate the relationship between the positive symptoms of schizophrenia and erroneous memory, as well as between the negative symptoms and memory insufficiency, whereby confirming the above-mentioned psychopathological model of schizophrenia.
Methods:In this study, 39 patients with schizophrenia were evaluated with the Positive and Negative Symptom Scale (PANSS) and Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAM-D). They also completed the following memory task; During the free-recall and recognition memory task, sub-items of ‘Intrusion’, ‘Perseveration’, and ‘False Alarm’ were defined as ‘Erroneous memory’ and the memory efficiency was measured by the number of memory response. The correlations between the sub-items of ‘Erroneous memory’ and the total score of PANSS positive dimension, as well as between the memory efficiency and the total score of PANSS negative dimension were examined with Pearson product-moment coefficient.
Results:The results of this study showed a positive correlation between the positive symptoms and ‘Intrusion’ and between the positive smptoms and ‘Perseveration’. In other words, more severe positive symptoms were associated the more ‘Intrusion’ and ‘Perseveration’. On the other hand, no correlation was found between the positive symptoms and ‘False Alarm’. Furthermore, a negative correlation was found between the negative symptoms and memory efficiency, whereby more severe negative symptoms accompanied more impaired memory efficiency.
Conclusion:The results of our study have been found to confirm the psychopathological model of schizophrenia, that the positive symptoms result from erroneous memory related to the reality monitoring and the negative symptoms result from the deficit of response. The interpretation of such results, however, should be limited to memory tasks, and further studies are necessary to examine whether our results can be generalized to other cognitive functions. (Schizophrenia Clinics 2003;6:137-144) |
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