Context-processing deficits in schizophrenia: Converging evidence from three theoretically motivated cognitive tasks

To test the hypothesis that the ability to actively represent and maintain context information is a central function of working memory and that a dist urbance in this function contributes to cognitive deficits in schizophrenia , the authors modified 3 tasks-the AX version of the Continuous Performance Test, Stroop, and a lexical disambiguation task-and administered them to p atients with schizophrenia as well as to depressed and healthy controls. Th e results suggest an accentuation of deficits in patients with schizophreni a in context-sensitive conditions and cross-task correlations of performanc e in these conditions. However, the results do not definitively eliminate t he possibility of a generalized deficit. The significance of these findings is discussed with regard to the specificity of deficits in schizophrenia a nd the hypothesis concerning the neural and cognitive mechanisms that under lie these deficits.