Sustained attention deficits in schizophrenia: Effect of memory load on the Identical Pairs Continuous Performance Test

BACKGROUND: Sustained attention and vigilance impairments are well documented in people with schizophrenia (PSZ). The processes implicated in this impairment remain unclear. Here we investigated whether vigilance performance varied as a function of working memory load, and also examined the role of attentional lapsing that might arise from a loss of task set resulting in mind wandering. METHOD: We examined Continuous Performance Test Identical Pairs (CPT-IP) data from a cumulative sample of 247 (PSZ) and 238 healthy control (HC) participants collected over a series of studies. RESULTS: PSZ performed more poorly that HC across conditions with signal/noise discrimination (d′) decreasing with increasing working memory load across both groups However, there was a significant interaction of group and load suggesting that performance of PSZ was more negatively impacted by increasing load. We also found that PSZ has a significantly higher rate of attention lapsing than did HC. DISCUSSION: Our results suggest that difficulties maintaining task set and working memory limitations are implicated in the impairments observed on the Identical Pairs CPT. Difficulties with task set maintenance appear to explain the majority of between-group variance, with a more subtle impact of increasing working memory load.