Pattern of Attentional Task Impairment in Schizophrenic Patients: A Study Report

The present study attempted to find out the relationship between positive and negative clinical symptoms and ？various attentional task impairment in a group of schizophrenic patients. METHODS: Fifty schizophrenic patients were assessed using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale ？(PANSS) by a trained psychiatrist (TKA) who was blind to attentional test measures and two groups, each of 25 ？positive symptom and 25 negative symptom schizophrenic patients, were formed. On these 50 patients with ？schizophrenia and 15 normal control groups, various attentional test measures were applied by a clinical ？psychologist (SS) who remained blind to the PANSS score. RESULTS: It was found that schizophrenic patients were deficient in performing simple auditory and visual ？attentional tasks in comparison to normal subjects. The results of this study are inconsistent with the assumption ？that deficits in attention are uniquely associated with negative symptoms. The findings clearly support the ？hypothesis of a relationship between type of attentional processing and “dimensions” of schizophrenic ？symptomatology. The positive symptoms patients seem to be associated with attentional dysfunction especially ？selective attention and short term recall, whereas negative symptoms patients seem to be associated with different ？types of attentional deficits, e.g., sustained attention and visual attention. CONCLUSIONS: The findings of our study are consistent with the existing literature that schizophrenic patients ？in general perform poorly on various measures of attentional tasks. Positive and negative symptoms ？schizophrenics have some correlation with distinct attentional deficits. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/jucms.v1i2.8402 Journal of Universal College of Medical Sciences Vol.1(2) 2013: 1-7