Contemporary psychology, Vol. 10 No. 1, 2007.
Original scientific paper
Disorders of conceptual reasoning and executive functions in schizophrenic individuals
Slavka Galić
; County General Hospital
Abstract
The aim of this study was to establish the frequency of deficits in a number of categories completed in the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test in schizophrenic individuals and to examine differences according to age, sex, education, duration of illness, intellectual ability, verbal learning and memory, immediate recall of visual stimuli and psychopathology (measured by personality inventory) between schizophrenic individuals with and without deficits in a number of categories completed in the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. Participants in this study were 56 outpatients from a general hospital who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and who were without positive symptoms. Based on the number of categories completed in the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, participants were divided in two groups: with deficits (N = 33) and without deficits (N = 23). The deficits were established in relation to norms which were based on age and education. Deficits were established in 59% of the participants, with a greater frequency in males. The group with deficits in a number of completed categories was older and with a longer duration of illness (even though the difference was not significant), with less years of education, with lower results in the intellectual ability test and more sensitive to the effects of proactive inhibition. No significant differences were found in verbal learning and memory, the immediate recall of complex figures and in psychopathology. The obtained results suggest the possibility that the deficits of conceptual reasoning and executive functions are independent from memory deficits and from the results of the personality inventory, but they are in association with the level of intellectual ability, education and duration of illness.
Keywords
Wisconsin Card Sorting Test; executive function; conceptual reasoning; schizophrenia
Hrčak ID:
81383
URI
Publication date:
30.6.2007.
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