Abstract
BackgroundA number of reports showed en encouraging remediation in some patients' executive deficits thanks to the use of 'information processing strategies'. Moreover the impact of antipsychotics on cognitive functions of the schizophrenics is an important issue, especially if an integrated psychosocial treatment is needed.The aim of this paper is to evaluate different executive performance and response to verbalization, a strategy of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) remediation, in subjects on classical vs atypical antipsychotic (AP) treatment.MethodsSixty-three schizophrenic subjects undertook the WCST under standard and modified (verbalization) administration. Subjects were stratified by the kind of WCST response (i.e. good, poor and remediable) and AP treatment (i.e. atypical vs. classical).ResultsSubjects on atypical APs showed a better performance than those on classical ones. More poor performers who did not remediate were seen in the sample with classical Aps while subjects who remediated the performance were seen in the subgroup with atypical APs only. An increase of perseverative and total errors was seen in poor performers subjects on classical APs.ConclusionSubjects on atypicals showed a better cognitive pattern in terms of WCST performance. Since the naturalistic assignment of medication we cannot draw conclusions about its effect on cognitive performance and its interaction with cognitive remediation potential. However the data lead us to hypothesize that subjects with potential room for remediation did so with the atypical APs.
Highlights
A number of reports showed en encouraging remediation in some patients' executive deficits thanks to the use of 'information processing strategies'
Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) performance and distribution of the total sample along the 'remediation pattern' (Good, Remediable and Poor) is reported in the Table 1. Both Good and Remediating subjects improved their performance while Poor performers at both WCST administrations worsened in terms of an increase of perseverative and total errors
When further stratification was made on the basis of atypical or classical AP therapy, more poor performers not remediating were seen in the sample with classical APs (68.75% of the poor performers) while remediators were only present in the subgroup with atypical APs (ChiSquare = 9.28, d.f. = 2, P < 0.01 for 2 × 3 contingency table)
Summary
A number of reports showed en encouraging remediation in some patients' executive deficits thanks to the use of 'information processing strategies'. The impact of antipsychotics on cognitive functions of the schizophrenics is an important issue, especially if an integrated psychosocial treatment is needed. The aim of this paper is to evaluate different executive performance and response to verbalization, a strategy of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) remediation, in subjects on classical vs atypical antipsychotic (AP) treatment
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