ARE THERE SEX-DIFFERENCES IN NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL FUNCTIONS AMONG PATIENTS WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA

Objective: Studies of sex differences in neuropsychological performanc e in schizophrenia report inconsistent results, due in part to methodo logical artifacts. The study presented here was specifically designed to examine sex differences in neuropsychological performance. It was h ypothesized that schizophrenic women would exhibit fewer neuropsycholo gical deficits than schizophrenic men and that their performance would be more similar to that of normal women than schizophrenic men's perf ormance would be to that of normal men. Method: Thirty-one outpatients with DSM-III-R-defined schizophrenia were systematically sampled from an extensive service network serving a large urban catchment area for seriously mentally ill persons. Twenty-seven normal comparison subjec ts were matched within sex on the basis of age, parental socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and handedness. An extensive neuropsychological te st battery was administered, and multivariate analysis of variance was used to test for the effects of sex and group and sex-by-group intera ctions. Results: Male patients were significantly impaired across all functions in comparison with normal male subjects and on tests of atte ntion, verbal memory, and executive functions in comparison with femal e patients. Female patients performed significantly worse than female normal comparison subjects only on tests of attention. executive funct ions, visual memory, and motor functions. Conclusions: The findings su ggest that women with schizophrenia may be less vulnerable to particul ar cognitive deficits, especially those involving verbal processing, t han schizophrenic men.