Deficits in visual working-memory capacity and general cognition in African Americans with psychosis

Authors

Samuel R. Mathias
Emma E. Knowles
Jennifer Barrett
Tamara Beetham
Olivia Leach
Sebastiano Buccheri
Katrina Aberizk
John Blangero, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Russell A. Poldrack
David C. Glahn

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-2018

Abstract

On average, patients with psychosis perform worse than controls on visual change-detection tasks, implying that psychosis is associated with reduced capacity of visual working memory (WM). In the present study, 79 patients diagnosed with various psychotic disorders and 166 controls, all African Americans, completed a change-detection task and several other neurocognitive measures. The aims of the study were to (1) determine whether we could observe a between-group difference in performance on the change-detection task in this sample; (2) establish whether such a difference could be specifically attributed to reduced WM capacity (k); and (3) estimate k in the context of the general cognitive deficit in psychosis. Consistent with previous studies, patients performed worse than controls on the change-detection task, on average. Bayesian hierarchical cognitive modeling of the data suggested that this between-group difference was driven by reduced k in patients, rather than differences in other psychologically meaningful model parameters (guessing behavior and lapse rate). Using the same modeling framework, we estimated the effect of psychosis on k while controlling for general intellectual ability (g, obtained from the other neurocognitive measures). The results suggested that reduced k in patients was stronger than predicted by the between-group difference in g. Moreover, a mediation analysis suggested that the relationship between psychosis and g (i.e., the general cognitive deficit) was mediated by k. The results were consistent with the idea that reduced k is a specific deficit in psychosis, which contributes to the general cognitive deficit.

Comments

Original published version available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2017.08.015

Recommended Citation

Mathias, S. R., Knowles, E. E. M., Barrett, J., Beetham, T., Leach, O., Buccheri, S., Aberizk, K., Blangero, J., Poldrack, R. A., & Glahn, D. C. (2018). Deficits in visual working-memory capacity and general cognition in African Americans with psychosis. Schizophrenia research, 193, 100–106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2017.08.015

Publication Title

Schizophrenia research

DOI

10.1016/j.schres.2017.08.015

Academic Level

faculty

Mentor/PI Department

Office of Human Genetics