中国科学院心理健康重点实验室知识库

Patients with schizophrenia (SCZ) consistently show prospective memory (PM) impairments, and the technique of implementation intentions has been shown to improve PM performance in these patients. PM is considered to have prospective and retrospective components. However, it remains unclear which component of PM is impaired in patients with SCZ and which component(s) is facilitated by implementation intentions (II). The present study aimed to examine these two issues. Forty-two patients with SCZ and 42 matched healthy controls were randomly assigned to an II group or a typical instruction group. All participants were administered a color-matching PM task. Results showed that, using a multinomial-modeling approach, patients with SCZ exhibited impairment in the retrospective component of PM. In addition, while II improved the prospective PM component in healthy controls, both prospective and retrospective PM components in patients with SCZ were improved. Together, our results shed light on the mechanism of PM impairment in SCZ patients and the mechanism of II in improving PM performance. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.