DID YOU KNOW.........





Cognition and functional outcome among deaf and hearing people with
schizophrenia. Horton HK, Silverstein SM.



Recent research has highlighted the relationships between impairments in
cognitive functioning and poorer functional outcomes among people with
schizophrenia (PWS). The purpose of this study was to replicate and
extend this work by testing the relationships between cognition and
functional outcome among deaf adults with schizophrenia. Empirical
findings from deafness-oriented research reveals enhanced abilities in
certain aspects of visual-spatial processing compared to hearing people.
Sixty-five PWS (34 deaf, 31 hearing) were assessed using measures of
verbal and visual memory, attention, and visual processing.



The first hypothesis tested whether cognition predicted functional
outcome in a similar fashion for both deaf and hearing subjects (n=63).
For all subjects, higher levels of cognitive ability were associated
with higher levels of functional outcome, and the strongest predictors
of outcome were verbal memory and visual-spatial memory (recall
condition) (VSM recall). However, the deaf and hearing groups did show
different patterns of relationships between cognition and functioning
when all cognitive variables were examined.



The second hypothesis was that deaf subjects would display superior
performance in early visual processing, visual-spatial memory (copy
condition) (VSM copy), and VSM recall. Deaf subjects displayed superior
performance on each task; however, no significant differences emerged.
Deaf subjects outperformed hearing subjects in an unexpected domain
(word memory/recognition).



This study extends prior work in the area of cognition and schizophrenia
and indicates that deaf and hearing subjects may benefit from
interventions that address different domains of cognition.



Schizophr Res. 2007 Aug;94(1-3):187-96. Epub 2007 Jun 7. Links





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