Relationship of negative symptom severity with cognitive symptoms and functioning in subjects at ultra‐high risk for psychosis (original) (raw)
Related papers
Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 2016
Negative symptoms mediate the relationship between neurocognition and function in individuals at ultrahigh risk for psychosis. Objective: Neurocognition is known to impact functioning in individuals at ultrahigh risk (UHR) for psychosis, but studies investigating potential mediators of this relationship are scarce. Building on evidence from schizophrenia spectrum disorders, the study tested whether negative symptoms and social skills act as mediators between neurocognition and functional outcome in UHR individuals. Methods: Ultrahigh risk participants (N = 84) underwent neurocognitive testing using the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia. Social skills and negative symptoms were assessed using the High-Risk Social Challenge task and the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms respectively. Four instruments were used to assess overall functioning, and one instrument assessed quality of life encompassing social functioning. Results: The cross-sectional analyses revealed that neurocognition was related to the measures of functioning. Negative symptoms mediated the relationship between neurocognition and four of the five measures of functioning. We did not find social skills to mediate between neurocognition and functioning. Conclusion: Negative symptoms appear to mediate the relationship between neurocognition and functional outcome in UHR individuals, but the finding needs to be confirmed and extended to longitudinal studies. This underscores the importance of focusing on both neurocognition and negative symptoms when aiming at improving the functional outcome of UHR individuals.
Frontiers in Psychiatry
Negative and cognitive symptoms are core features of schizophrenia that are correlated in cross-sectional designs. To further explore the relationship between these critical symptom dimensions we use a method for stratifying participants based on level and persistence of negative symptoms from absent to sustained levels over a 10-year follow-up period. We investigate associations with cognitive performance and level of global functioning. First-episode psychosis (FEP) participants (n = 102) and healthy controls (n = 116) were assessed at baseline and follow-up. A cognitive battery consisting of 14 tests derived into four domains and a composite score were used in the analyses. FEP participants were stratified based on negative symptom items from the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS-R) into four groups with either no, mild, transitory or sustained symptoms over the 10-year follow-up period. Global functioning was measured with Global Assessment of Functioning Scale-Split v...
Psychiatry Research, 2019
We investigate negative symptoms over a 1-year follow-up period with the objective to see how groups defined according to level of symptom severity are related to cognition. Eighty-seven participants with first-episode psychosis (FEP) and matched healthy controls were assessed at baseline and follow-up. FEP participants were sub-grouped based on negative symptom items from the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS-R) with either no, mild, transitory or sustained symptoms over one year. Following an overall MANOVA, groups were compared on cognitive domains and a cognitive composite using ANOVAs. Cognitive course was explored with a MANOVA. We found a group effect on cognition. Participants who sustained negative symptoms were significantly outperformed by participants with no negative symptoms on executive functions and processing speed, and by those with mild or transitory symptoms on verbal learning and memory. Participants with sustained negative symptoms performed significantly poorer on the cognitive composite than those with no or mild negative symptoms. The group with no negative symptoms did not differ significantly from healthy controls on any cognitive measure, and the groups did not differ in cognitive course. Early course of negative symptoms is associated with cognition and could guide clinicians when evaluating need for cognitive assessment.
Schizophrenia Research, 2006
Objective: The aim of this study is to assess if cognitive variables and symptom dimensions can predict disability in a sample of outpatients with schizophrenia. Method: A cross-sectional sample of 113 individuals with a diagnosis of schizophrenia (DSM-IV criteria) was selected from a computerized register of five Community Mental Health Centers. Patients were assessed by two trained psychologists, with a neuropsychological battery comprising measures for verbal memory, attention, operative memory and abstraction and flexibility functions. Symptoms were assessed with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS); a socio-demographic and clinical questionnaire, comprising the Disability Assessment Scale (DAS), was also completed. Test scores were standardized (t scores) to performance of healthy controls. To assess the relationship between clinical and sociodemographic factors and disability and cognitive functioning Pearson's correlation coefficients were computed. In order to establish the predictive capacity of the cognitive, clinical and symptom variables on disability linear regression models were fitted. Results: Mean age of patients was 41.6 years and 68% were male. Higher ratings in the negative dimension were associated with more cognitive deficits. Association with the positive dimension was present but less strong. All disability areas, except for disability in occupational functioning, were partially explained by the negative dimension. Disability in family functioning was also partially explained by attention and number of admissions since onset. Conclusion: Negative symptoms are the major source of disability of our sample and are also associated to cognitive functioning. The present findings suggest that further investigation on the mediators between clinical and social outcomes may help to design specific treatments to reduce disability.
Schizophrenia Research, 2015
Cognition, negative symptoms, and depression are potential predictors of disability in schizophrenia. We present analyses of pooled data from four separate studies (all n N 169; total n = 821) that assessed differential aspects of disability and their potential determinants. We hypothesized that negative symptoms would predict social outcomes, but not vocational functioning or everyday activities and that cognition and functional capacity would predict vocational functioning and everyday activities but not social outcomes. The samples were rated by clinician informants for their everyday functioning in domains of social and vocational outcomes, and everyday activities, examined with assessments of cognition and functional capacity, rated clinically with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and self-reporting depression. We computed a model that tested the hypotheses described above and compared it to a model that predicted that negative symptoms, depression, cognition, and functional capacity had equivalent influences on all aspects of everyday functioning. The former, specific relationship model fit the data adequately and we subsequently confirmed a similar fit within all four samples. Analyses of the relative goodness of fit suggested that this specific model fit the data better than the more general, equivalent influence predictor model. We suggest that treatments aimed at cognition may not affect social functioning as much as other aspects of disability, a finding consistent with earlier research on the treatment of cognitive deficits in schizophrenia, while negative symptoms predicted social functioning. These relationships are central features of schizophrenia and treatment efforts should be aimed accordingly.
The European Journal of Psychiatry, 2014
Background and Objectives: Studies in patients with schizophrenia have shown a decreased overall cognitive performance, and it was found that processing speed and working memory functions are affected. The aim of this study was to describe the general cognitive performance of patients with chronic schizophrenia and analyze its relationship with the severity of psychotic symptoms. Methods: Forty-eight patients diagnosed with DSM IV-TR schizophrenia disorder were examined for symptom improvement, measured by scales SAPS and SANS. Participants also completed the full scale WAIS-III. Results: The results show a generalized cognitive deficit, reflected in the low level of general intelligence, as well as the different index that comprise the scale. The most compromised index was the processing speed. The correlations showed that the overall severity of negative symptoms significantly affects cognitive functioning of chronic patients. The formal thought disorder and alogia significantly correlated with almost all the WAIS-III measures. Conclusions: Multiple studies of specific cognitive domains in schizophrenia have shown that deficits in processing speed are the core element of cognitive impairment in schizophrenia. We support the hypothesis about the slowing in cognitive processing affect both the performance of the basic and more complex cognitive task.
Amendment of traditional assessment measures for the negative symptoms of schizophrenia
European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists, 2018
Schizophrenia research based on traditional assessment measures for negative symptoms appears to be, to some extent, unreliable. The limitations of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS) have been extensively acknowledged and should be taken into account. The aim of this study is to show how the PANSS and the SANS conflate negative symptoms and cognition and to offer alternatives for the limitations found. A sample of 117 participants with schizophrenia from two independent studies was retrospectively investigated. Linear regression models were computed to explore the effect of negative symptoms and illness duration as predictors of cognitive performance. For the PANSS, the item "abstract thinking" accounted for the association between negative symptoms and cognition. For the SANS, the "attention" subscale predicted the performance in verbal memory, but illness duration emerged as a stronger p...
Schizophrenia Research, 2012
Increased attention has been given to treatment of negative symptoms and its potential impact on functional outcomes, however previous inferences have been confounded by the fact that measures of functional outcomes often use items similar to those of negative symptoms. We attempted to discern the relative effects of negative symptoms on functioning, as compared to other symptoms, using data from the National Institute of Mental Health CATIE trial of chronic schizophrenia (n = 1447) by examining correlations of Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale factors, Calgary Depression Rating Scale and select items from Heinrich's and Lehman's Quality of Life Scales measuring aspects of functioning that did not overlap with negative symptoms. Baseline functioning and change in functioning were more strongly related to PANSS negative factor than any of the other symptomsthough the amount of variance explained by symptom changes in general was small. The data suggests that improvement in negative symptoms may have a distinctive and independent effect on functional outcome relative to other symptoms. This should be further tested in studies where negative symptoms improve without concomitant improvement of other symptoms.
Neurotoxicity Research, 2008
Negative symptoms of schizophrenia have been related to disturbances of executive functions, memory, attention and motor functioning. The executive functions dimension comprises a variety of cognitive subprocesses, including speed of processing, flexibility and working memory. We independently analysed the relationship between different cognitive tasks and clinical symptoms (negative, positive and disorganized) in a sample of 126 first-episode patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Negative symptoms were significantly associated with performance on executive-functions and motor coordination tasks. Within the executive functions domain only those tests that required speeded performance showed a significant association with the negative dimension. The widely described relationship between negative symptoms and executive impairments in schizophrenia appears to be mediated by likely dysfunctions in the speed of processing instead of by working memory impairment.