Abstract

The present study was designed to investigate the characteristics of memory process and memory performances in schizophrenia. In experiment 1, the words based on their semantic relatedness were administered to a schizophrenic group(SCH), nonschizophrenic group(non-SCH) and normal controls. And then, analyses were done on scores of free recall task, recognition task, and scores of memory clustering from their free recall task. Further analyses were done on memory strategies in three group. In Experiment 2, it was further hypothesized that if the differential memory deficit of schizophrenics were due to organization difficulties at an encoding stage, giving instructions on memory organization should enhance free recall, recognition, and memory clustering on free recall tasks. The major findings of the present study were as follow ; the scores on free recall task by SCH were significantly lower than those of non-SCH and of normal controls, also the later two groups were comparable. And there was no explicit differnce in recognition scores among three groups. Scores on memory clustering by SCH were significantly lower than normal controls. In fact, schizophrenic's memory deficits were due to organization difficulties and the problem in mnemonic strategies at an encoding stage. Instructions on memory organization could facilitate the free recall scores and memory clustering scores. More specifically, SCH given an instruction beforehand performed much better than those that did not. Normals did not show any effect of instruction on free recall scores, which might be considered to be due to a ceiling effect. Finally, there was no effect of instruction on recognition task.