Context processing and negative symptoms in schizophrenia.

The objective of the study was to test the assumption that patients with a high level of negative symptoms show disproportionate impairments of inhibition and multitasking, both representing an underlying context processing mechanism. A total of 26 schizophrenia patients scoring high or low on negative symptoms (Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale) and a group of 13 healthy controls were assessed on measures of response inhibition (AX- Continuous Performance Task, Stroop Test) and multitasking (Dual Task, Trail Making Test). Only the high negative symptoms group showed significantly higher inhibition costs and multitasking costs than healthy controls. In the AX-Continuous Performance Test, inhibition costs exceeded context costs in patients with more severe negative symptoms, while in controls a tendency towards the reverse pattern emerged. There were no statistically significant effects involving the patient group with lower negative symptom scores. The pattern of results suggests that primarily patients with more severe negative symptoms have difficulties benefiting from contextual information. The deficit may manifest itself via increased multitasking costs and increased inhibition costs but also via reduced context costs.