Abstract
This chapter reviews the literature and on cognitive function in schizophrenia. Patients with this illness display deficits in several different cognitive domains.
In particular deficits in attention, working memory, episodic memory, and executive functions. As the review suggests, the literature on cognitive function in schizophrenia points to impairments in a set of basic cognitive functions including attentionally-mediated selection of task-relevant information, and suppression of task-irrelevant information, maintenance and manipulation of information in working memory, context-based organization of cues for memory encoding and retrieval, and updating and switching of internally represented goal-related information.
The chapter reviews neuropsychological tests that are available for the purposes of cognitive assessment. Pathogenetic findings related to cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia and results of methods of rehabilitation of cognitive functions are discussed.