Comparative Study Of Verbal And Symbolic Working Memory In Psychiatric Patients.

Abstract

organizational ability. Psychiatric patients are known to show major impairment in this area. This study was to examine verbal and symbolic working memory in psychiatric patients. The participants for the study included twenty one (21) psychiatric patients with age range of 16-64 with M age of 44.40 and SD age of 4.33. Two different instruments of seven cards each were used to test the working (both verbal and symbolic) memory of the participants. Repeated measure experimental design was used in the study while repeated measure t-test and One Way Anova statistics were used in data analysis. The result showed significant differences between verbal and verbal + symbolic working memory on both serial and total recall among participants. In addition, the depressives, schizophrenics and substance induced psychotics differed on serial recall of verbal working memory. Discussion and recommendations from the study were made.