Auditory working memory impairments in individuals at familial high risk for schizophrenia.

OBJECTIVES: The search for predictors of schizophrenia has accelerated with a growing focus on early intervention and prevention of psychotic illness. Studying nonpsychotic relatives of individuals with schizophrenia enables identification of markers of vulnerability for the illness independent of confounds associated with psychosis. The goal of these studies was to develop new auditory continuous performance tests (ACPTs) and evaluate their effects in individuals with schizophrenia and their relatives. METHODS: We carried out two studies of auditory vigilance with tasks involving working memory (WM) and interference control with increasing levels of cognitive load to discern the information-processing vulnerabilities in a sample of schizophrenia patients, and two samples of nonpsychotic relatives of individuals with schizophrenia and controls. Study 1 assessed adults (mean age = 41), and Study 2 assessed teenagers and young adults age 13-25 (M = 19). RESULTS: Patients with schizophrenia were impaired on all five versions of the ACPTs, whereas relatives were impaired only on WM tasks, particularly the two interference tasks that maximize cognitive load. Across all groups, the interference tasks were more difficult to perform than the other tasks. Schizophrenia patients performed worse than relatives, who performed worse than controls. For patients, the effect sizes were large (Cohen's d = 1.5), whereas for relatives they were moderate (d = ~0.40-0.50). There was no age by group interaction in the relatives-control comparison except for participants <31 years of age. CONCLUSIONS: Novel WM tasks that manipulate cognitive load and interference control index an important component of the vulnerability to schizophrenia.

Spiritual well-being and health.

Data on empirical associations between religious variables and health outcomes are needed to clarify the complex interplay between religion and mental health. The aim of this study was to determine whether associations with health variables are primarily attributable to explicitly religious aspects of spiritual well-being (SWB) or to "existential" aspects that primarily reflect a sense of satisfaction or purpose in life. Three hundred forty-five pairs of twins from the Vietnam Era Twin Registry completed a diagnostic interview and questionnaires containing the 2-factor SWB Scale and general health items. Observed associations between SWB and health outcomes were uniquely explained by the SWB subscale of existential well-being, with much less of a unique explanatory contribution from religious well-being or "spiritual involvement." We concluded that studies of SWB and health should continue to distinguish between explicitly religious variables and others that more closely approximate the psychological construct of personal well-being.