Article Sidebar
Published:
Sep 20, 2017Article Details
http://www.sajp.org.za/index.php/sajp/pages/view/policies#part_4
Copyright
The author(s) retain copyright on work published by AOSIS unless specified otherwise.
Licensing and publishing rights
Author(s) of work published by AOSIS are required to grant AOSIS the unlimited rights to publish the definitive work in any format, language and medium, for any lawful purpose.
AOSIS requires journal authors to publish their work in open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.
Read more here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
The authors retain the non-exclusive right to do anything they wish with the published article(s), provided attribution is given to the applicable journal with details of the original publication, as set out in the official citation of the article published in the journal. The retained right specifically includes the right to post the article on the authors’ or their institution’s websites or in institutional repositories.
Previously published work may have been published under a different licence. We advise the community that if they would like to reuse the work to consult the applicable licence at article level.
Main Article Content
Cognitive-perceptual deficits and symptom correlates in first-episode schizophrenia
Abstract
Background: Thought disorder and visual-perceptual deficits have been well documented, but their relationships with clinical symptoms and cognitive function remain unclear. Cognitive-perceptual deficits may underscore clinical symptoms in schizophrenia patients.
Aim: This study aimed to explore how thought disorder and form perception are related with clinical symptoms and cognitive dysfunction in first-episode schizophrenia.
Setting: Forty-two patients with a first-episode of schizophrenia, schizophreniform or schizoaffective disorder were recruited from community clinics and state hospitals in the Cape Town area.
Methods: Patients were assessed at baseline with the Rorschach Perceptual Thinking Index (PTI), the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and the MATRICS Cognitive Consensus Battery (MCCB). Spearman correlational analyses were conducted to investigate relationships between PTI scores, PANSS factor analysis-derived domain scores and MCCB composite and subscale scores. Multiple regression models explored these relationships further.
Results: Unexpectedly, poor form perception (X- %) was inversely correlated with the severity of PANSS positive symptoms (r = -0.42, p = 0.02). Good form perception (XA%) correlated significantly with speed of processing (r = 0.59, p < 0.01), working memory (r = 0.48, p < 0.01) and visual learning (r = 0.55, p < 0.01). PTI measures of thought disorder did not correlate significantly with PANSS symptom scores or cognitive performance.
Conclusions: Form perception is associated with positive symptoms and impairment in executive function during acute psychosis. These findings suggest that there may be clinical value in including sensory-perceptual processing tasks in cognitive remediation and social cognitive training programmes for schizophrenia patients.
