Les patients schizophrènes présentent-ils un déficit en mémoire autobiographique lorsque le rappel est indicé ?

Abstract

Background: Patients with schizophrenia expose a wide range of cognitive deficits, inclusive autobiographical memory impairment. It has been suggested that patients' memories lack specificity and contain few phenomenological details. The purpose of this study was to explore autobiographical memory recall in patients with schizophrenia. Methods: Two autobiographical memory enquiries were used: TEMPau and TeMA. The TEMPau gives clues to the participants, whereas TeMA does not. Sixty-one patients with schizophrenia and fifty-six comparison participants took part in the study. Results: The schizophrenia group displayed an overgeneral style of autobiographical memory retrieval only on TEMPau test. Autobiographical memory scores and the proportion of specific memories in TEMPau were lower in patients with schizophrenia than in comparison participants. And on TEMPau test, patients with schizophrenia need more clues than control subjects to recall specific detailed memories. But there are no differences between groups for specific memory recall on TeMA test. Conclusion: Clues improve recall of specific memories in patients with schizophrenia but not enough to have comparable results with comparison participants. In our view, it seems that the difference between patients with schizophrenia and comparison participants, resides at the specificity and detail level. In a future perspective, we think that a specific cueing method (with specific questions about the recall) can improve autobiographical memory recall in patients with schizophrenia.