Community outcome in cognitively normal schizophrenia patients.

Recent reports suggest that cognition is relatively preserved in some schizophrenia patients. However, little is known about the functional advantage these patients may demonstrate. The purpose of this study was to identify cognitively normal patients with a recently developed test battery and to determine the functional benefit of this normality relative to cognitively impaired patients.

Preserved, deteriorated, and premorbidly impaired patterns of intellectual ability in schizophrenia.

Objective: The main purpose of this investigation was to identify patterns of intellectual performance in schizophrenia patients suggesting preserved, deteriorated, and premorbidly impaired ability, and to determine clinical, cognitive, and functional correlates of these patterns.

Method: We assessed 101 patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and 80 non-psychiatric control participants. The "preserved" performance pattern was defined by average-range estimated premorbid and current IQ with no evidence of decline (premorbid-current IQ difference <10 points).

Stability and change in symptoms, cognition, and community outcome in schizophrenia.

It has been well established that neurocognitive deficits are a core feature in schizophrenia and predict difficulties in functional independence. However, few studies have assessed the longitudinal stability of cognition and key aspects of functional outcome concurrently. Even less attention has been directed at the contingency of cognitive change on real world outcome changes.

WAIS-IV profile of cognition in schizophrenia.

The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) has been used extensively to study impairment across a range of cognitive domains in schizophrenia. However, cognitive performance among those with the illness has yet to be examined using the newest edition of this measure. Hence, the current study aims first, to provide WAIS-IV normative data for Canadian individuals with schizophrenia of low average intelligence; second, to examine schizophrenia performance on all WAIS-IV subtest, index and general intelligence scores relative to healthy comparison subjects; and third, to revalidate the pattern of impairment identified in this clinical group using the WAIS-III, where processing speed (PS) was most affected, followed by working memory (WM), perceptual reasoning (PR) and verbal comprehension (VC).

The Canadian Objective Assessment of Life Skills (COALS): a new measure of functional competence in schizophrenia.

This study examined the reliability and validity of a new performance-based measure of functional competence for individuals with serious mental illness, the Canadian Objective Assessment of Life Skills (COALS). The COALS assesses both routinized procedural knowledge routines (PKR) and executive operations (EXO) in order to capture functional outcome variance. The COALS was administered to 101 outpatients with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder and 80 non-psychiatric controls.

"Real world" functioning in schizophrenia patients and healthy adults: assessing validity of the Multidimensional Scale of Independent Functioning.

As treatment efforts to enhance cognitive abilities in schizophrenia increase, so too does the need for a critical appraisal of instruments that measure functionality and adjustment to community living. The Multidimensional Scale of Independent Functioning (MSIF; Jaeger et al., 2003) is a promising instrument that assesses functionality in relation to different life settings, performance levels, responsibilities and environmental supports.

An investigation of 3 neurocognitive subtypes in schizophrenia.

The purpose of this investigation was to identify patients with cognitively impaired, cognitively normal and verbal memory-impaired subtypes of schizophrenia and to examine their clinical and functional validity as distinct forms of the disorder. These subtypes occurred in 73 of 154 patients meeting DSM-IV criteria for schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. A control group comprised of 18 healthy participants was also analyzed.

Interactions between the effects of early isolation rearing and complex housing on adult locomotor activity and sensitivity to amphetamine in rats involve noradrenergic neurotransmission.

Increased sensitivity to the locomotor-activating effects of amphetamine in rats with a history of early-life social isolation is commonly attributed to alteration of the dopamine system. The locomotor response to amphetamine may also be due to effects on the noradrenergic system and particularly alpha-adrenergic receptors. The present study examined whether noradrenergic neurotransmission mediates the increased sensitivity to the locomotor effects of amphetamine resulting from early social isolation and whether this effect can be reversed by later-life social housing experience.

Psychopathology and cognition in divergent functional outcomes in schizophrenia.

Cognitive performance rather than symptoms, especially positive symptoms, is regarded as the primary predictor of functional outcome in schizophrenia. However, contradictory evidence exists and many studies fail to sample from the extremes of outcome measures. This study tested whether the differential importance assigned to symptoms and cognitive impairment is supportable in patients with high and low levels of community independence.

Cognitive performance and functional competence as predictors of community independence in schizophrenia.

Measures of functional competence have been introduced to supplement standard cognitive and neuropsychological evaluations in schizophrenia research and practice. Functional competence comprises skills and abilities that are more relevant to daily life and community adjustment. However, it is unclear whether relevance translates into significantly enhanced prediction of real-world outcomes.

Cognitive, clinical, and functional characteristics of verbally superior schizophrenia patients.

The existence of small numbers of schizophrenia patients with superior ability in specific cognitive domains is implied by meta-analytic evidence as well as by occasional empirical reports. The authors identified 25 patients with superior (i.e.

Are schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder neuropsychologically distinguishable?

This study sought to objectify the distinction between schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder in terms of standard tasks measuring verbal and non-verbal cognitive ability, auditory working memory, verbal declarative memory and visual processing speed. Research participants included 103 outpatients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, 48 with schizoaffective disorder, and 72 non-patients from the community. Schizophrenia patients were impaired on all cognitive measures relative to schizoaffective patients and non-psychiatric participants.