T. Suslow et V. Arolt, PARANOID SCHIZOPHRENIA - NONSPECIFICITY OF NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL VULNERABILITY MARKERS, Psychiatry research, 72(2), 1997, pp. 103-114
During stages of remission, patients with paranoid schizophrenia seldo
m show severe attentional or information-processing dysfunctions, exce
pt in cases of long-term chronicity. The diagnostic specificity of fou
r putative psychological vulnerability indicators of schizophrenia - t
he Span of Apprehension, the degraded stimulus Continuous Performance
Test (dsCPT), the degraded stimulus visual backward masking task and t
he Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) - was examined in a group of pat
ients with paranoid schizophrenia. Since no single test seems to ident
ify all patients, the use of a combination of measures may be a useful
strategy. Accordingly, the four tests were administered to 18 paranoi
d schizophrenic patients, 18 depressed patients and 18 normal subjects
. Paranoid schizophrenic patients could be distinguished from normal s
ubjects primarily on the basis of their performance on the backward ma
sking task and secondarily by the dsCPT and the WCST. Paranoid schizop
hrenic and depressed patients could be differentiated to some extent b
y their performance on an information-mask condition of the backward m
asking task. Thus, of the four measures studied, only the degraded sti
mulus backward masking appeared to be a specific indicator of paranoid
schizophrenia. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd.