Performance of chronic schizophrenics on matched word and design recall tasks

Matched word and design recall tasks were constructed and used to assess the performance of chronic schizophrenics on neuroleptics alone and on both neuroleptic and anticholinergic drugs. The two groups of patients performed at an equally low level on both tasks, without evidence for a differential deficit. The tasks did, however, evoke a differential deficit in clustering performance for designs as opposed to words. Although clustering, which is based on recall, is not necessarily as well matched for words and designs as recall itself, this result suggests a lateralized dysfunction in brain structures related to use of mnemonic organization at retrieval.