Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T00:41:58.412Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Confabulation in schizophrenia and its relationship to clinical and neuropsychological features of the disorder

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2007

E. LORENTE-ROVIRA ,
E. POMAROL-CLOTET ,
R. A. McCARTHY ,
G. E. BERRIOS  and
P. J. McKENNA
E. LORENTE-ROVIRA*
Affiliation:
Clinical Hospital, Valencia (AVS), Spain
E. POMAROL-CLOTET
Affiliation:
Benito Menni CASM, Sant Boi de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain
R. A. McCARTHY
Affiliation:
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, UK
G. E. BERRIOS
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, UK
P. J. McKENNA
Affiliation:
Section of Psychological Medicine, University of Glasgow, UK
*
*Address for correspondence: Ms Esther Lorente-Rovira, Servicio de Psiquiatría, Centro de Salud Mental de la Malvarrosa, Avda/Malvarrosa, 10, 46003 Valencia, Spain. (Email: [email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Background

A form of confabulation has been documented in schizophrenia and appears to be related to the symptom of thought disorder. It is unclear whether it is associated with the same pattern of neuropsychological deficits as confabulation in neurological patients.

Method

Thirty-four patients with chronic schizophrenia, including those with and without thought disorder, and 17 healthy controls were given a fable recall task to elicit confabulation. They were also examined on a range of executive, episodic and semantic memory tests.

Results

Confabulation was seen at a significantly higher rate in the schizophrenic patients than the controls, and predominated in those with thought disorder. Neuropsychologically, it was not a function of general intellectual impairment, and was not clearly related to episodic memory or executive impairment. However, there were indications of an association with semantic memory impairment.

Conclusions

The findings support the existence of a form of confabulation in schizophrenia that is related to thought disorder and has a different neuropsychological signature to the neurological form of the symptom.

Type
Original Article
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 37 , Issue 10 , October 2007 , pp. 1403 - 1412
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Andreasen, N. C. (1979). Thought, language and communication disorders: I. Clinical assessment, definition of terms and evaluation of their reliability. Archives of General Psychiatry 36, 1315–1321.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baddeley, A. (1990). Human Memory: Theory and Practice. Erlbaum: Hove.Google Scholar
Baddeley, A. D., Emslie, H. & Nimmo-Smith, I. (1994). Doors and People. A Test of Visual and Verbal Recall and Recognition. Thames Valley Test Company: Bury St Edmunds.Google Scholar
Baddeley, A. D. & Wilson, B. (1988). Frontal amnesia and the dysexecutive syndrome. Brain and Cognition 7, 212–230.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Benson, D. F., Djenderedjian, A., Miller, B. L., Pachana, N. A., Chang, L., Itti, L. & Mena, I. (1996). Neural basis of confabulation. Neurology 46, 1239–1243.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berrios, G. E. (2000). Confabulations. In Memory Disorders in Psychiatric Practice (ed. Berrios, G. E. and Hodges, J. R.), pp. 348–368. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bozeat, S., Lambon, Ralph M. A., Patterson, K., Garrard, P. & Hodges, J. R. (2000). Non-verbal semantic impairment in semantic dementia. Neuropsychologia 38, 1207–1215.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Burgess, P. W. & Shallice, T. (1997). The Hayling and Brixton Tests. Thames Valley Test Company: Bury St Edmunds.Google Scholar
Chaika, E. O. (1974). A linguistic looks at ‘schizophrenic’ language. Brain and Language 1, 257–276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, A. M. & Quillian, M. R. (1969). Retrieval time from semantic memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour 8, 240–247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dab, S., Morais, J. & Frith, C. (2004). Comprehension, encoding, and monitoring in the production of confabulation in memory: a study with schizophrenic patients. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry 9, 153–182.Google ScholarPubMed
Dalla, Barba G. (1993). Different patterns of confabulation. Cortex 29, 567–581.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Delucchi, K. L. & Bostrom, A. (2004). Methods for analysis of skewed data distributions in psychiatric clinical studies: working with many zero values. American Journal of Psychiatry 161, 1159–1168.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gilboa, A. & Moscovitch, M. (2002). The cognitive neuroscience of confabulation: a review and model. In Handbook of Memory Disorders (2nd edn) (ed Baddeley, A. D., Kopelman, M. D. and Wilson, B. A.), pp. 315–342. Wiley: Chichester.Google Scholar
Goldberg, T. E. & Weinberger, D. R. (2000). Thought disorder in schizophrenia: a reappraisal of older formulations and an overview of some recent studies. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry 5, 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howard, D. & Patterson, K. (1992). The Pyramids and Palm Trees Test. Thames Valley Test Company: Bury St Edmunds.Google Scholar
Kapur, N. & Couglan, A. K. (1980). Confabulation and frontal lobe dysfunction. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 43, 461–463.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kopelman, M. D. (1987). Two types of confabulation. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 50, 1482–1487.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kopelman, M. D. (1999). Varieties of false memory. Cognitive Neuropsychology 16, 197–214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kraepelin, E. (1913). Dementia Praecox and Paraphrenia (trans. R. M. Barclay, 1919). Livingstone: Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Kramer, S., Bryan, K. L. & Frith, C. D. (1998). ‘Confabulation’ in narrative discourse by schizophrenic patients. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders 33 (Suppl.), 202–207.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Laws, K. R., Humber, S. A., Ramsey, D. J. C. & McCarthy, R. A. (1995). Probing sensory and associative semantics for animals and objects in normal subjects. Memory 3, 397–408.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McKenna, P. J. & Oh, T. (2005). Schizophrenic Speech. Making Sense of Bathroots and Ponds that Fall in Doorways. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.Google Scholar
Moscovitch, M. & Melo, B. (1997). Strategic retrieval and the frontal lobes: evidence from confabulation and amnesia. Neuropsychologia 35, 1017–1034.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nathaniel-James, D. A., Foong, J. & Frith, C. D. (1996). The mechanisms of confabulation in schizophrenia. Neurocase 2, 475–483.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nathaniel-James, D. A. & Frith, C. D. (1996). Confabulation in schizophrenia: evidence of a new form? Psychological Medicine 26, 391–399.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nelson, H. (1991). National Adult Reading test (NART) (2nd edn). NFER-Nelson: Windsor.Google Scholar
Papagno, C. & Baddeley, A. (1997). Confabulation in a dysexecutive patient: implications for models of retrieval. Cortex 33, 743–752.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salazar-Fraile, J., Tabarés-Seisdedos, R., Selva-Vera, G., Balanzá-Martinez, V., Martinez-Arán, A., Catalán, J., Baldeweg, T., Vilela-Soler, C., Leal-Cercós, C., Vieta, E. & Gomez-Beneyto, M. (2004). Recall and recognition confabulation in psychotic and bipolar disorders: evidence for two different types without unitary mechanisms. Comprehensive Psychiatry 45, 281–288.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shallice, T. & Evans, M. E. (1978). The involvement of the frontal lobes in cognitive estimation. Cortex 14, 294–303.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spitzer, M. (1997). A cognitive neuroscience view of schizophrenic thought disorder. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 23, 29–50.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Victor, M., Adams, R. D. & Collins, G. H. (1971). The Wernicke–Korsakoff Syndrome. F.A. Davis Company: Philadelphia.Google ScholarPubMed
Wechsler, D. (1981). Manual for the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale – Revised. Psychological Corporation: New York.Google Scholar
Wing, J. K., Cooper, J. E. & Sartorius, N. (1974). The Measurement and Classification of Psychiatric Symptoms. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.Google Scholar
Withers, E. & Hinton, J. (1971). Three forms of the clinical tests of the sensorium and their reliability. British Journal of Psychiatry 119, 1–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed