Neuropsychological functioning among the elderly nonpsychotic relatives of schizophrenic patients

In our prior work with a young sample (age < 60), we showed that three neuropsychological functions were impaired among relatives of schizophrenic patients: abstraction, verbal memory, and auditory attention. In the present work we show that these results do not generalize to an older sample aged 60 years and greater. Thus, although we and others have put forth measures of neuropsychological function as indicators of the schizophrenia genotype, the present study suggests that conclusions may be limited to non-elderly samples. Further work is needed to address this issue definitively.