Memory retrieval in schizophrenia: Evidence from part-list cuing

Abstract

Schizophrenia patients are known to exhibit episodic verbal memory deficits. Although their neural origin is debated, they have often been compared to the memory problems found in temporal lobe amnesia or frontal lobe dysfunction. Furthermore, it is unclear to what extent such deficits arise at either memory encoding or retrieval. We addressed the issue of retrieval deficits in schizophrenia in a part-list cuing experiment, testing the effect of the presentation of a subset of previously learned material on the retrieval of the remaining items. The part-list cuing procedure generally impairs retrieval but previous work showed that the detrimental effects are more pronounced in amnesic participants than in healthy people, indicating a retrieval deficit under part-list cuing conditions in amnesia. In the present study, schizophrenia patients did not exhibit increased susceptibility to part-list cuing effects and thus showed no increased retrieval inhibition from part-list cuing. Moreover, in part-list cuing, schizophrenia patients did not mirror the pattern found in amnesia, demonstrating a dissociation between amnesia and schizophrenia patients with respect to this particular memory effect. Implications for the neural basis of the part-list cuing effect and of memory disturbances in schizophrenia are discussed.