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Updated: Aug 30, 2026
Measurement of Fronto-limbic Activity Using an Emotional Oddball Task in Children with Familial High Risk for Schizophrenia
Published on: December 2, 2015
A prospective study of childhood neurocognitive functioning in schizophrenic patients and their siblings
Tara A Niendam1, Carrie E Bearden, Isabelle M Rosso
1Department of Psychology, University of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
Objective:
This study evaluated childhood cognitive functioning in individuals who later developed schizophrenia and in their unaffected siblings.
Method:
Through the National Collaborative Perinatal Project, seven subtests of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children were administered at age 7 to 32 individuals who developed schizophrenia in adulthood, 25 of their nonschizophrenic siblings, and 201 demographically similar nonpsychiatric comparison subjects. Mixed model analysis was used to examine between-group differences in standardized scores on the subtests.
Results:
The probands and unaffected siblings had lower scores for picture arrangement, vocabulary, and coding than the comparison subjects but differed from each other only on the coding subtest.
Conclusions:
Children who later developed schizophrenia and their siblings showed similar patterns of deficits involving spatial reasoning, verbal knowledge, perceptual-motor speed, and speeded processes of working memory. However, the probands exhibited more severe deficits in perceptual-motor speed and speeded processes of working memory than their unaffected siblings.
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