Differential disruptions of working memory components in schizophrenia in an object-location binding task using the...

Patients with schizophrenia exhibit normal memory for separate objects or locations but are disproportionately impaired when the items must be bound for later recognition in a working memory (WM) setting (Burglen et al., 2004). This study aimed at further evaluating the contribution of each WM component to the patients' binding deficit, using selective articulatory, visuospatial, and executive suppression tasks. In the object-location binding task used, a trial comprised the successive presentation of three drawings of familiar objects and of three spatial locations in a grid, either separately (i.e., objects alone or locations alone) or bound (i.e., object+location), and required a recognition test following an 8-s delay. In the suppression modalities, suppression was continuous from presentation to test. A total of 22 patients with schizophrenia and 24 healthy controls participated. The results confirmed the binding deficit in patients' performance in the baseline modality where no suppression was required. They also showed that patients were particularly disrupted when suppression was visuospatial. This last finding extends the specific visuospatial vulnerability in schizophrenia to the operations of binding.