Wisconsin Card Sorting Test performance impairment in schizophrenia: An Indian study report

AIM: The present study attempted to find out the relationship between positive and negative clinical symptoms and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) performance in a group of schizophrenia patients. METHODOLOGY: Fifty schizophrenia patients were assessed using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) by a trained psychiatrist (TKA) and two groups, each of 25 positive symptom and 25 negative symptom schizophrenia patients were formed. On these fifty patients with schizophrenia and 15 normal control groups, WCST measures were applied by a clinical psychologist (SS) who remained blind to the PANSS score. RESULTS: Schizophrenia diagnosis significantly affects WCST performances. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed schizophrenia patients showed a significant impairment on all WCST indices compared with normal subjects except versus total number of correct responses. Post hoc comparison (Tukey HSD Test) between means revealed that negative schizophrenia patients showed significantly worse performance on most WCST performance parameters: percent errors, perseverative responses, percent perseverative responses, perseverative errors, percent perseverative errors, and conceptual level responses. CONCLUSIONS: Both positive and negative symptom schizophrenia patients have some distinct WCST measures deficits.