N-back Task in Schizophrenia

One of the most salient impairments in schizophrenia are in the realm of neurocognition (Zanello, Curtis, Ba, and Merlo, 2009). Working memory impairments in schizophrenia was investigated with the N-back task in first-episode and chronic schizophrenia patients to measure its evolution over time. The participants had to press a key on the N-back task in case of the current stimulus was identical to the one two digits back. According to the results, both patient groups performed worse than a healthy control group on the N-back working memory task. Reaction times in both patient groups were also slower arguing for a slowing of information processing (Zanello et al., 2009). In addition, it was found that both groups of schizophrenia patients had a worse accuracy of responses, both to target and non-targed cues. There were no working memory differences between both patient groups. According to the authors, based on these findings, working memory problems are already evident at the beginning of the disease.