Impaired Working Memory Capacity Is Not Caused by Failures of Selective Attention in Schizophrenia

Erickson, Molly; Hahn, Britta; Leonard, Carly J.; Robinson, Benjamin M.; Gray, Brad; Luck, Steven J.; Gold, James M.

doi:10.1093/schbul/sbu101

Cited by 39 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 28 publications

(45 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This effect could be explained in two ways. First, the distractor was a potent stimulus for activating the magnocellular pathway, which previous research shows can lead to greater capture of attention in PSZ (Erickson et al, submitted; Gold et al, 2006; Hahn, Robinson, Kaiser, Harvey, Beck, Leonard, Kappenman, Luck, & Gold, 2010; Leonard et al, in press). Second, the distractor was much closer to the fixation point than was the target, and as the next section will describe, PSZ may hyperfocus on the fixation point and surrounding region.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hyperfocusing in schizophrenia: Evidence from interactions between working memory and eye movements.

Luck

McClenon

Beck

et al. 2014

Journal of Abnormal Psychology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recent research suggests that processing resources are focused more narrowly but more intensely in people with schizophrenia (PSZ) than in healthy control subjects (HCS), possibly reflecting local cortical circuit abnormalities. This hyperfocusing hypothesis leads to the counterintuitive prediction that, although PSZ cannot store as much information in working memory as HCS, the working memory representations that are present in PSZ may be more intense than those in HCS. To test this hypothesis, we used a task in which participants make a saccadic eye movement to a peripheral target and avoid a parafoveal nontarget while they are holding a color in working memory. Previous research with this task has shown that the parafoveal nontarget is more distracting when it matches the color being held in working memory. This effect should be enhanced in PSZ if their working memory representations are more intense. Consistent with this prediction, we found that the effect of a match between the distractor color and the memory color was larger in PSZ than in HCS. We also observed evidence that PSZ hyperfocused spatially on the region surrounding the fixation point. These results provide further evidence that some aspects of cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia may be a result of a narrower and more intense focusing of processing resources.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hyperfocusing in schizophrenia: Evidence from interactions between working memory and eye movements.

Luck

McClenon

Beck

et al. 2014

Journal of Abnormal Psychology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In an attempt to isolate the capacity-limiting process, various investigations have probed different stages of WM storage, including selection (1; 2), consolidation (3; 4), and maintenance (5). Overall, the pattern of results from these studies implicates abnormalities in early stages of WM formation, such as encoding or consolidation; there is little evidence that capacity limitations are a consequence of accelerated decay during maintenance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impaired Suppression of Delay-Period Alpha and Beta Is Associated With Impaired Working Memory in Schizophrenia

Erickson

Albrecht

Robinson

et al. 2017

Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background Although people with schizophrenia (PSZ) frequently exhibit reduced working memory capacity relative to healthy comparison subjects (HCS), the mechanisms that underlie this impairment are not yet known. The present study aimed to assess one putative mechanism: impaired suppression of alpha and beta frequency bands during the delay period of a visual working memory task. Methods The electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded from 30 PSZ and 31 HCS while they completed a change detection task in which they were required to remember a briefly presented array of colored squares over an 1800-ms delay interval. Results Overall, we found that PSZ had significantly reduced alpha and beta-band suppression during the delay interval compared to HCS, and that these significant differences emerged early (100-200 ms after the onset of the memory array). Furthermore, the magnitude of suppression was significantly associated with task performance across both groups. Finally, the magnitude of suppression in alpha and beta frequency bands was significantly associated with a range of cognitive measures among HCS, but not PSZ. Conclusions These results implicate impaired alpha/beta suppression during the consolidation period of working memory tasks as a promising neural mechanism that constrains capacity in PSZ.

show abstract

“…This has been demonstrated both when items are selected based on their physical properties and when attention is focused spatially. [1][2][3] Particularly surprising were results from spatial attention paradigms based on Posner 4 in which a cue directs attention to 1 of 2 possible target locations. Here, the reaction time (RT) benefit conferred by a cue predicting the target location, relative to a non-predictive cue, actually tended to be larger in PSZ than in healthy control subjects (HCS), [5][6][7][8][9] suggesting greater attentional selection.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hyperdeactivation of the Default Mode Network in People With Schizophrenia When Focusing Attention in Space

Hahn

Harvey

Gold

et al. 2016

SCHBUL

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

When studying selective attention in people with schizophrenia (PSZ), a counterintuitive but replicated finding has been that PSZ display larger performance benefits than healthy control subjects (HCS) by cues that predicts the location of a target stimulus relative to non-predictive cues. Possible explanations are that PSZ hyperfocus attention in response to predictive cues, or that an inability to maintain a broad attentional window impairs performance when the cue is nonpredictive. Over-recruitment of regions involved in top-down focusing of spatial attention in response to predictive cues would support the former possibility, and an inappropriate recruitment of these regions in response to non-predictive cues the latter. We probed regions of the dorsal attention network while PSZ (N = 20) and HCS (N = 20) performed a visuospatial attention task. A central cue either predicted at which of 4 peripheral locations a target signal would appear, or it gave no information about the target location. As observed previously, PSZ displayed a larger reaction time difference between predictive and non-predictive cue trials than HCS. Activity in frontoparietal and occipital regions was greater for predictive than non-predictive cues. This effect was almost identical between PSZ and HCS. There was no sign of overrecruitment when the cue was predictive, or of inappropriate recruitment when the cue was non-predictive. However, PSZ differed from HCS in their cue-dependent deactivation of the default mode network. Unexpectedly, PSZ displayed significantly greater deactivation than HCS in predictive cue trials, which may reflect a tendency to expend more processing resources when focusing attention in space.

show abstract

Impaired Working Memory Capacity Is Not Caused by Failures of Selective Attention in Schizophrenia

Cited by 39 publications

References 28 publications

Hyperfocusing in schizophrenia: Evidence from interactions between working memory and eye movements.

Hyperfocusing in schizophrenia: Evidence from interactions between working memory and eye movements.

Impaired Suppression of Delay-Period Alpha and Beta Is Associated With Impaired Working Memory in Schizophrenia

Hyperdeactivation of the Default Mode Network in People With Schizophrenia When Focusing Attention in Space

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About