Auditory and visual distractibility in schizophrenia. Clinical and medication status correlations

Medicated and unmedicated schizophrenics were compared (both n=18) on visual and auditory digit serial recall tasks with interspersed distraction. It was found that both medicated and unmedicated schizophrenics were distractible auditorally, but that only unmedicated schizophrenics were distractible on visually presented information. Positive, but not negative thought disorder predicted poorer auditory, but not visual, distraction performance for the medicated patients. For the unmedicated patients, positive thought disorder was also associated with auditory, but not visual distraction performance. Negative thought disorder was also a predictor of distraction performance, both visual and auditory, for the unmedicated patients. These results are interpreted in terms of their implications for the effects of medication on absolute performance levels in laboratory tasks and on associations between laboratory and clinical indices.