HRSZ and HRBP shared several aspects of their cognitive impairment. Our data suggest that the extremely high genetic and familial loading of these HRs may have contributed to a quantitatively increased magnitude of the cognitive impairments in both HR subgroups, especially in memory. These offspring at heightened risk present difficulties in processing information that warrant preventive research.

These findings suggest that adolescents with a first episode of psychosis show specific rather than global attentional impairments. Sustained and selective attention seems to be preserved, whereas divided attention and attentional control are impaired when compared to controls. The attentional profile seems to be unrelated to either the clinical symptomatology or the diagnosis underlying psychosis. A partial independence between cognition and clinical symptomatology could be hypothesized from these data but remains to be directly assessed in future studies.

No abstract