Excessive checking behavior during an image comparison task in schizophrenia

Abstract

Background: Patients with schizophrenia display significant working memory and executive deficits. In patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), several studies suggest that working memory dysfunction may be one of the causes of compulsive checking behaviors. Hence, this study aimed at assessing whether patients with schizophrenia were impaired on an image comparison task used to measure checking behaviors, and whether the origin and profile of impairment on this task was different between schizophrenia and OCD.

Methods: Eye movement recordings were used to assess the checking behavior of 24 patients with schizophrenia and 24 control participants who had to decide whether two images were different or identical. The verbal and visuo-spatial components of participants' working memory were measured using the reading span and backward location span tests.

Results: Compared to controls, patients with schizophrenia had reduced working memory spans and showed excessive checking behavior when comparing the two images. However, the intensity of their checking behavior was not significantly related to their working memory deficits.

Conclusions: Several recent studies demonstrated that the excessive checking behaviors displayed by patients with OCD were related to working memory dysfunction. The absence of a relationship between the excessive checking behavior of patients with schizophrenia and their working memory deficits suggests that checking behaviors do not have the same origin in the two disorders.

Keywords: Checking behavior; Executive functions; Eye-tracking; Obsessive-compulsive disorder; Schizophrenia; Working memory.