INDIVIDUAL-DIFFERENCES IN SPATIAL WORKING-MEMORY IN RELATION TO SCHIZOTYPY

Wit a delayed-response task, spatial working memory function was asses sed in normal students who were selected for schizotypy. The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test was also administered. Twenty-eight undergraduate s tudents who scored high on the Perceptual Aberration Scale(PerAb) and 23 who scored low on this scale participated in this study. High PerAb students performed less accurately compared with the low PerAb contro ls on the delayed-response task, and they were more than twice as like ly as low PerAb students to be impaired. The groups did not differ in the number of perseverative errors or number of categories achieved on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, but, as predicted, high PerAb studen ts were less able to maintain set than were the low PerAb students. Ne uropsychological implications of these data are discussed.