Cognitive inhibition and quality of life in schizophrenia: a pilot study

Aim: To compare cognitive inhibition and quality of life in patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls.

Methods: Ten patients with schizophrenia were compared to 10 healthy controls, matched for age, sex, and educational level. Cognitive inhibition was examined by: 1) access to relevant information (Reading with distraction task), 2) suppression of no longer relevant information (Trail Making Test), and 3) restraint of cognitive resources to relevant information (Stroop Test, Hayling Sentence Completion Test, Go/No-Go Test). Montgomery Asberg Depression Rating Scale, Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale, and Schizophrenia-Quality of Life scale (S-QoL) were also used.

Results: Patients with schizophrenia showed a significant impairment in the suppression function of cognitive inhibition only, in comparison to the control group. Their access and restraint functions of cognitive inhibition were preserved. No relationship between quality of life and cognitive inhibition was found in patients with schizophrenia.

Conclusions: During the stabilization phase of schizophrenia, the ability to inhibit neutral information access to working memory, and to restrain and suppress irrelevant information may not impair the patient's capacity to respond adequately to stressful situations, and thus would do not impact their quality of life.