Cognitive Function in Schizophrenia: A Review

Abstract

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by delusion, hallucination, formal thought disorder, disorganized or catatonic behavior, negative symptoms (e.g. emotional blunting, decreased initiative, impoverished speech etc.) and cognitive dysfunction. Though not described as diagnostic criteria, cognitive dysfunction is the strongest determinant of functional recovery as it has a gradual deteriorating effect on social and occupational functioning. It precedes coincides and outlasts positive symptoms. Among different cognitive abilities it affects attention, memory, processing speed, social cognition and executive function most. Recent studies are showing schizophrenia affects those who have compromised cognitive function or low IQ. Moreover different brain imaging techniques have shown structural and functional abnormality in certain areas. This article has tried to answer few questions like, are cognitive dysfunctions inevitable in schizophrenic patients and if it is then what are the areas what is the nature of affection. It is also important to know how and why they affect the long term outcome of this disorder.

Differences in daily life executive functioning between people with autism and people with schizophrenia

“…Executive functions have been shown to be a robust predictor of lower adaptive behavior in ASD (Kenworthy et al, 2008;Matthews et al, 2015;Wallace et al, 2016) as well as in SSD (Bhattacharya, 2015;Fiksinski et al, 2019;Marinopoulou et al, 2016). Therefore, we anticipated that higher scores in the DEX-Sp (i.e., greater impairment) would predict lower scores in the VABS-II DLS Domain (i.e., greater problems in adaptive behaviors).…”

“…A systematic review by Bhattacharya (2015) into EF in SSD found that monitoring, working memory, planning, switching and inhibitory control were among the most frequently affected EFs. Also, mental flexibility and the ability for abstraction have been linked to EF impairments in this disorder (Clark et al, 2010).…”

“…Therefore, our first objective was to conduct a comparative analysis of cognitive impairments in everyday executive functioning between ASD and SSD samples compared to controls. To do that, we used the Dysexecutive Questionnaire-Spanish (DEX-Sp) (Pedrero-Pérez et al, 2011, 2015, a tool that typically detects EF difficulties in clinical populations that are known to have EF problems such as the Dysexecutive Syndrome -DS (Yang et al, 2018;Shi et al, 2017), found a stronger relationship between impaired EFs with autistic traits than EF and schizotypal traits. We expected to find a similar pattern of results, whereby participants with ASD would show greater deficits than participants with SSD.…”

“…This lack of research is somewhat surprising, given that EF affects multiple aspects of an individual's performance in day-to-day activities. In the case of SSD, EF impairments can be associated with difficulties coping with roles in community settings, such as a reduction in social abilities, an unsuccessful vocational path (Bhattacharya, 2015), and with a poor quality of life (Clark et al, 2010). Meanwhile, ASD problems in EF can be linked to adjusting to new settings and coping with the roles expected from others as part of their transition into…”

Neuropsychological profile of executive functions in autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia spectrum disorders: a comparative group study in adults

“…Future longitudinal studies, or even cross-sectional studies with different age groups, could help us to ascertain the developmental trajectory of EFs in ASD and closely study the dynamic changes that seem to be occurring in EFs in this clinical group . On the other hand, the progression of cognitive trajectory in SSD is different to the one observed in ASD as there seems to be a decline, rather than an improvement in cognitive performance [ 50 , 51 ].…”