NDA@SZTAKI

Double Dissociation of Explicit and Implicit Learning Performances in Neurocognitive Subgroups of Schizophrenia

Szendi, István

Demeter, Gyula

Janacsek, Karolina

Domján, Nóra

Greminger, Nóra

Németh, Dezső

Racsmány, Mihály

2015

BF Psychology / lélektan

BF13 Memory and learning / emlékezet, tanulás

RC0321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry / idegkórtan, neurológia, pszichiátria

INTRODUCTION Mapping cognitive functions in schizophrenia is important for approaching the
etiological background of the disease.
OBJECTIVES To examine the explicit and the implicit learning processes with experimental
psychological methods in neurocognitive subgroups identified by us earlier (Szendi et al, 2010).
AIMS: To find substantial cognitive differences between the neurocognitive subgroups
METHODS Patients with schizophrenia (n=19) and matched healthy control persons (n=11)
participated in the study. The patients were recruited randomly from the patient pool which constitued
the subject base for the original clustering process, we enrolled n=9 patients from the cluster S, and
n=10 from the cluster Z. Besides the comprehensive neuropsychiatric assessment, the explicit learning
performances were tested by a verbal learning task, while the implicit learning by the Alternating Serial
Reaction Time Task.
RESULTS While the whole group of patients did not differ from the healthy persons regarding either
the explicit or the implicit memory tasks, the performances of the two subgroups of patients showed a
double dissociation in these tasks. Whereas patients belonging to cluster S could recall significantly less
words in the explicit cued recall test after the word-list learning than patients in cluster Z (and the
healthy persons), the performance of patients in cluster Z in the implicit sequence-specific learning fell
behind the cluster S (and the healthy group).
CONCLUSIONS The double dissociation of explicit and implicit memory's impairments suggests that
the neurocognitive background of the two subgroups of schizophrenia (S vs Z) might substantially differ
from each other.

Conference or Workshop Item

PeerReviewed

text

http://real.mtak.hu/26636/1/EPA_2015_abstract.pdf

Szendi, István and Demeter, Gyula and Janacsek, Karolina and Domján, Nóra and Greminger, Nóra and Németh, Dezső and Racsmány, Mihály (2015) Double Dissociation of Explicit and Implicit Learning Performances in Neurocognitive Subgroups of Schizophrenia. In: 23rd European Congress of Psychiatry, 28-31 March, Vienna.

http://real.mtak.hu/26636/