Participants
Kirsten Polins
Anhedonia is Associated with Memory Impairment for Positive Emotion in Schizophrenia
Individuals with Schizophrenia display a discrepancy between reports of current pleasure, which appear to be intact, and reports of past pleasure obtained through clinical rating scales, which are diminished. In the current study, we examined whether this discrepancy can be explained by deficits in emotional memory. Participants included 24 Schizophrenia patients with Anhedonia, 39 patients without Anhedonia, and 41 healthy demographically matched controls. All subjects completed an emotional memory measure, the Emotional Verbal Learning Test, which examines recall and recognition of happiness, sadness, anger, and anxiety words. Results indicated that controls and non-Anhedonic Schizophrenia patients have superior recall for happiness rather than sadness, anger, anxiety at immediate recall trial 1, the total of trials 1 through 5, and long-delay recall. In contrast, patients with Anhedonia did not show this superiority at immediate recall trial 1 or long-delay free recall. These findings suggest that Anhedonia is associated with impaired encoding and retrieval of positive information in people with Schizophrenia.