MONAURAL AND BINAURAL RECALL OF STORIES IN SCHIZOPHRENIA - NEUROFUNCTIONAL HYPOTHESES

In a series of recent experiments, conflicting results have been reported concerning the possibility that schizophrenic patients can recall a story better in monaural than binaural conditions. The importance of this problem is related to the corpus callosum involvement in this kind of neuropsychological task. In this series, 61 schizophrenic patients assessed for diagnostic subtype and 40 age and education-matched normal controls were studied. Approximately 18 months after the first evaluation, 20 patients were retested. The results of the present investigations indicate a poorer recall in schizophrenics both ir monaural and in binaural conditions compared to controls. In both schizophrenics and controls there was a significant right ear advantage (REA). More schizophrenics than controls are over the critical cutoff for abnormal monaural asymmetry. The distribution of patients showing a binaural inferiority did not differ between schizophrenics and controls. There were no test-retest differences in the schizophrenics. These data appear to support the hypothesis that the interhemispheric integration of information is impaired in schizophrenia and seem to indicate good retest reliability.