MONAURAL AND BINAURAL RECALL OF STORIES IN SCHIZOPHRENIA - NEUROFUNCTIONAL HYPOTHESES

In a series of recent experiments, conflicting results have been repor ted concerning the possibility that schizophrenic patients can recall a story better in monaural than binaural conditions. The importance of this problem is related to the corpus callosum involvement in this ki nd of neuropsychological task. In this series, 61 schizophrenic patien ts assessed for diagnostic subtype and 40 age and education-matched no rmal controls were studied. Approximately 18 months after the first ev aluation, 20 patients were retested. The results of the present invest igations indicate a poorer recall in schizophrenics both ir monaural a nd in binaural conditions compared to controls. In both schizophrenics and controls there was a significant right ear advantage (REA). More schizophrenics than controls are over the critical cutoff for abnormal monaural asymmetry. The distribution of patients showing a binaural i nferiority did not differ between schizophrenics and controls. There w ere no test-retest differences in the schizophrenics. These data appea r to support the hypothesis that the interhemispheric integration of i nformation is impaired in schizophrenia and seem to indicate good rete st reliability.