Prior research has examined the hypothesis that negative symptoms, such as anhedonia and lack of motivation, are caused by impaired memory for positive or rewarding experiences. Results have been inconsistent and less work has examined memory for socially-relevant information. The current study employed a repeated measures design to assess immediate and delayed recall of valenced material among 50 individuals with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and 25 demographically-matched controls. We examined the contribution of negative symptoms and cognitive deficits to the recall of positive material on two different tasks: 1) recall for valenced words and 2) the associative learning of valenced social acts paired with facial stimuli. Results indicated that for the word list recall task, individuals with schizophrenia recalled fewer negative words during the immediate recall phase than controls. On the social affective learning task, individuals with schizophrenia, compared to controls, demonstrated poorer learning of positive social behavior associations. Within individuals with schizophrenia, cognitive impairment, but not symptoms, was related to poorer performance on both tasks. In controls, symptoms reflecting deficits in social motivation and pleasure (but not cognitive functioning) were associated with poorer performance in learning associations with positive social behaviors on the affective learning task. Findings suggest that poor learning and recall of positive information in schizophrenia is particularly salient for social stimuli and that reduced recall of social information in schizophrenia is related to general cognitive ability but not negative symptoms. Implications for findings and future directions are discussed.

中文翻译：

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学习其他人在精神分裂症中的情感价值：检查阴性症状和认知缺陷的作用

先前的研究已经检验了以下假说：消极症状（如快感不足和缺乏动力）是由对积极或有益体验的记忆力减退引起的。结果不一致，较少的工作检查了与社会相关的信息的记忆。当前的研究采用了重复测量设计，以评估50位精神分裂症或精神分裂症患者和25位人口统计学匹配的对照者对有价物质的立即和延迟召回。我们研究了消极症状和认知缺陷在两个不同任务上对积极材料的回忆的贡献：1）对有价单词的回忆和2）对有价社交行为与面部刺激的联想学习。结果表明，对于单词列表召回任务，精神分裂症患者在即刻回忆阶段回忆的否定词比对照组少。在社交情感学习任务上，精神分裂症患者与对照组相比，对积极的社交行为协会的学习较差。在精神分裂症患者中，认知障碍而非症状与两项任务的表现较差有关。在对照组中，反映社交动机和愉悦感不足（但不是认知功能）的症状与在情感学习任务上具有积极社交行为的学习联系中表现较差有关。研究结果表明，精神分裂症患者学习不良和积极信息回忆对社交刺激尤其重要，而精神分裂症中社会信息回忆的减少与一般认知能力有关，但与消极症状无关。讨论对发现和未来方向的影响。