Interactive effects of maintenance decay and interference on working memory updating in schizophrenia

Background: Deficits in working memory have been identified as a core cognitive impairment in schizophrenia. Prior work has identified a unique pattern of rapidly decreasing accuracy following intact encoding and updating of a single visuospatial target in patients with schizophrenia. Understanding whether these deficits are related to disruption of working memory stores following retrieval or part of a broader maintenance dysfunction may help elucidate the specific subprocesses underlying working memory deficits in schizophrenia. Methods: Participants were 71 patients with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder and 43 healthy controls who completed a working memory paradigm that parametrically varied maintenance demands from 1000 to 8000 ms. Results: Patients with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder were comparable to healthy controls at delays of 1000 ms. However, when delays were extended to 2000 and 4000 ms, the patient group showed significantly decreased accuracy. Additionally, the patient group showed a greater decline in accuracy following a second delay. Conclusions: These findings suggest that early encoding of one item is intact in patients with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder, but information rapidly decays from working memory stores with extended delays. Accuracy further decreased when information was retrieved from working memory, suggesting that working memory stores may also be susceptible to disruption from internal stimuli. Thus, working memory stores in patients with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder may be vulnerable to both rapid decay and interference.