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Verbal fluency in schizophrenia: relationship with executive function, semantic memory and clinical alogia
E M Joyce1, S L Collinson, P Crichton
1Academic Department of Psychiatry, Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School, London.
Psychological Medicine
|January 1, 1996
Summary
Schizophrenia patients struggle with verbal fluency due to inefficient semantic memory access, not a degraded store. Cognitive deficits are linked to frontostriatal dysfunction, similar to Parkinson's disease.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Psychiatry
Background:
- Schizophrenia is associated with impaired verbal fluency.
- The underlying cause (degraded semantic store vs. inefficient access) remains unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the nature of verbal fluency deficits in schizophrenia.
- To determine if schizophrenia involves a degraded semantic store or inefficient access.
Main Methods:
- Compared verbal fluency (letter and category) in 50 schizophrenia patients and 25 controls.
- Utilized a cueing technique to assess semantic access.
- Administered Stroop executive task and symptom scales (SANS, Manchester).
Main Results:
- Schizophrenia patients showed impaired verbal fluency but a normal pattern (category > letter).
- Cueing improved category fluency in patients, suggesting inefficient access.
- Improvement with cueing correlated with Stroop performance and inversely with alogia.
Conclusions:
- Poor verbal fluency in schizophrenia stems from inefficient access to semantic memory, not a degraded store.
- Findings suggest frontostriatal dysfunction underlies both verbal fluency deficits and alogia.
- Results align with cognitive patterns seen in frontostriatal disorders like Parkinson's disease.