The Effect of Working Memory Deficit on Social Functioning in Schizophrenia
Those authors contributed equally.
- DOI
- 10.2991/assehr.k.220504.404How to use a DOI?
- Keywords
- Working memory deficit; Social functioning; Schizophrenia
- Abstract
Working memory is universal and crucial in daily human life as a cognitive ability involved in organizing, executing, and inhibiting behaviour. Whether an individual can perform well in social functions depends on its development. Schizophrenia, as a neurological disorder, is associated with working memory deficit and is accompanied by poor social functioning. Understanding patients’ attachment forms, expressed emotions, and communication deviances have been recognized as a vital area of research and a strong predictor of the development, prevention, and treatment of schizophrenia. This review discussed the effect of working memory deficit on social functioning in schizophrenia through four areas. Previous research has demonstrated that working memory includes both auditory and visual types. Different types of working memory deficits can harm cognitive, learning, and social functioning in schizophrenia patients, so it is important to discuss whether widespread working memory deficits can affect their behaviour, such as regulation behaviour. Good social functioning requires sufficient working memory involvement to understand and cope with social situations. At the same time, it is crucial to investigate whether the associated symptoms exhibited by patients are due to their working memory deficits and whether these deficits affect their social functioning. Furthermore, working memory deficits also appear to affect patients’ everyday abilities, such as problem-solving and emotion regulation. Previous studies investigated whether this is related to the patients’ associated brain activity and whether their neural mechanisms differ from normal individuals. Considering that working memory and social functioning play a crucial role in the patients’ daily lives, it is possible that interventions at the behavioural and neurological levels could improve their associated abilities and symptoms. Notably, the results should be viewed in the context of some of the limitations of the previous studies. Firstly, previous studies have primarily used cross-sectional studies, which caused neglect of the continuum of individual differences and have failed to establish a causal relationship between working memory deficits and social functioning. It is suggested that future studies could be designed with follow-up studies and different types of working memory training to provide more reliable and accurate results. Secondly, previous studies of patients’ social functioning do not appear to incorporate the performance of real-life social scenarios, and by designing social scenarios closer to reality, generalizable results could be provided.
- Copyright
- © 2022 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.
- Open Access
- This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.
Cite this article
TY - CONF AU - Zixian Chen AU - Wanrui Gu AU - Zhangying Mo AU - Xiaoru Zhan PY - 2022 DA - 2022/06/01 TI - The Effect of Working Memory Deficit on Social Functioning in Schizophrenia BT - Proceedings of the 2022 8th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2022) PB - Atlantis Press SP - 2228 EP - 2236 SN - 2352-5398 UR - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.220504.404 DO - 10.2991/assehr.k.220504.404 ID - Chen2022 ER -