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Cognitive Dysfunction in Schizophrenia, Affective Disorder and Organic Brain Disease

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Richard Abrams
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, UHS/The Chicago Medical School, 3333 Green Bay Road, North Chicago, IL 60064
Joel Redfield
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Beth Israel Medical Center, New York City, N. Y.
Michael Alan Taylor
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, UHS/The Chicago Medical School

Summary

We used the Wechsler Adult Itelligence Scale (WAIS) to study a sample of patients with affective disorder (N = 52), schizophrenia (N = 17) and organic brain disease (N = 8). Schizophrenic patients had lower verbal, performance and full-scale IQs than patients with affective disorder, but were no different from those with organic brain disease. An individual WAIS subscale analysis showed that, compared with affectives, schizophrenics had relatively poorer performance on language than non-language tasks.

These differences were independent of age, sex, handedness, educational level or drug administration and are consistent with a variety of studies demonstrating significant cerebral dysfunction in carefully diagnosed schizophrenic patients.

Type
Papers
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1981 

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