Constructional Abilities in Persons with Chronic Schizophrenia

This study was designed to examine the performance of patients with chronic schizophrenia on a series of tasks of constructional abilities. Sixteen male patients and 18 normal controls between the ages of 30 and 60 participated in the study. The three constructional tests - Drawing to command and to copy, stick construction from copying and from a memory, and a three dimensional blocks task - were drawn from the Parietal Lobe Battery (Goodglass & Kaplan, 1972). The hypothesis that patients with schizophrenia would perform significantly more poorly than controls was partially supported in that there were between group differences on most but not all tasks. On the Sticks and Drawing task, there was no difference between groups when the task required direct copying yet patients with schizophrenia performed significantly more poorly than controls on the verbal command condition of the drawing task and the memory condition of the sticks task. On the Blocks test, patients with schizophrenia were significantly less accurate than controls and took significantly longer than controls. Results were discussed in terms of task complexity and brain-behavior relationships. The need to examine the relation of performance on constructional tasks to functional performance and/or outcome in schizophrenia was emphasized.