Schizophrenia Reflection

I choose the topic of schizophrenia because I saw what it can do to a person and I wanted to learn more about it. My friend’s uncle had schizophrenia he had trouble recalling most information. He was also very paranoid he thought people were always out. It was over simple things when he heard people whispering he thought they were planning to do something to him, when he heard others laugh they were planning something. To just wonder how that feels to not remember everything, and that the world you’re living is against you that’s why I choose schizophrenia.

Background: Working memory allows us to use information to complete tasks such as learning, reasoning and comprehension. When we recall these pieces of information we use mental imagery

to imagine the pictures in our head. But studies are showing that a brain disorder schizophrenia is actually increasing mental imagery with people who have it. An experiment revealed that there was actually a stronger enhanced mental imagery in schizophrenic patients. But when they had to recall more information this enhanced imagery went away.

Hypothesis: The hypothesis is that does that the addition of a working memory reduce performance on the mental imagery test.

Methods: Experiment 1, fifteen patients that had schizophrenia were chosen at random from a private psychiatric hospital in Tennessee. All patients were taking antipsychotic medication when they were being tested (five on risperidone, three on olanzapine, three on quetiapine, one on paliperidone, one on thiothixene, and one on clozapine). Then fourteen healthy control participants with no schizophrenia were chosen at random they were also for Tennessee. The two groups were then matched based on age, level of education, gender, and handedness. The procedures used was an imagery task. This imagery task was divided into two parts, a training and a testing phase. The training phase consisted of 4 upper case block (H, J, S, U) was place on a 4 by 5 grid. The letters were shown three times on the screen then participants would draw the letters on the now blank grid until they made a mistake. The results of the testing phase participants completed everything.

The test was made to test accuracy and response time then the participants had to take VVIQ (Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire).

The questionnaire was done in an interview style format. The participants had to imagine scenes and rate how vivid the scene was on a scale of 5-1 scale with one being the most vivid image. There was four scenes and four questions that followed this is done with eyes open and then eyes closed results were taken. Then after participants had to take a SWM (Spatial Working Memory) test. This is a test were a small circle was flashed on a screen for 400 milliseconds followed up by a 10 second delay, after this the participant had to select the location of the small circle using their finger. The exam had 48 levels the accuracy and response time of each participant was recorded. The purpose of this test was to measure spatial location in working memory. The results of the VVIQ was that there was little to no difference in VVIQ ratings between the schizophrenic patients and the regular patients, the groups had very similar vividness on mental images with eyes open and closed. While on the SWM the schizophrenic group was less accurate than the regular group, but there was little to no difference in response time. In experiment 1 there was little difference between VVIQ scores and the results of the other exams by any group. There was also no relation between working memory and imagery accuracy or response time in both

groups.

Experiment 2 was made to further the idea that does more working memory reduce the enhanced imagery of schizophrenic patients. This time sixteen schizophrenic patients were selected and sixteen regular people were selected. The patients were under the same circumstances as experiment 1 they were on antipsychotics (eight risperidone, two olanzapine, two clozapine, three quetiapine, one ziprasidone). The groups were then paired based on age, IQ, education level, gender, and handedness. The tests from experiment 1 were made with modifications to increase the amount of working memory.

The test had two conditions, the first was a letter condition. The letter conditions used letters as the stimuli, and used shapes as the condition. The shapes used in the condition were irregularly shaped. The irregular shapes were used to stimulate mental imagery. The experiment had the same concept as the imagery test used in Experiment 1. Four upper case block (H, J, S, and U) were place on a 4 by 5 grid. The letters were shown three times on the screen then participants would draw the letters on the now blank grid until they made a mistake. The accuracy and response time was recorded. In part 2 of this experiment 2 a SWM (Spatial Working Memory) was done again. But now the small circle was flashed on a screen for 300 milliseconds rather than 400 milliseconds, and an 8 second delay rather than a 10 second delay. Like before participants had to select the location of the small circle using their finger accuracy and response time was recorded.

Results: The hypothesis that does that the addition of a working memory reduce performance on the mental imagery test in patients with schizophrenia. The results of these two experiments found that there was little to no difference between schizophrenic patients and regular patients on the reaction times on experiment 2’s test. The same could be the same for the letter and shape test in experiment these results show that working memory overload removes enhanced mental imagery effects from patients with schizophrenia. At the same time schizophrenic patients were able performed as well as the regular group in the accuracy category. This shows that the ability of imagery works even when high working memory demands are made.

Conclusion: In conclusion it seems that schizophrenic people are capable of maintaining mental imagery. We got learn more about schizophrenic people and what their capabilities are with the brain disorder. Something like this could be read by others to understand that people with schizophrenia are just like us. Just because they have a brain disorder does not mean they are any different, we all use our memory on a daily basis to remember events that are important well their memory is just as good.

Constructive Article Critique: I didn’t not like this article. I felt as if the vocabulary is too high at times, and most of it seems to just repeat a point over and over. The experiments are set up way to complicated and the results should be displayed more clearly next time rather than being jumbled up in a long paragraph. If I was writing this article I would clearly explain the point once, and not explain it a whole bunch of times. I would also cut out all the high vocabulary so everyone could understand it I would also display the results of each experiment of separate sheets at the end of the paper so they could be clearer instead of being written out in a paragraph.