Verbal Memory Tasks Showing No Deficit in Schizophrenia—Fact or Artefact?

Summary Schizophrenics show a deficit in a variety of verbal memory tasks, except recognition memory, and incidental learning when recall is preceded by an ‘orienting task’ which ensures effective encoding. These two exceptions provide experimental evidence for the currently prevailing theory that it is a defect in effective encoding which is responsible for the observed schizophrenic verbal memory deficit. The present review concludes that these two exceptions are probably artefacts of unmatched tasks, and cannot be used to support the theory.