Research on executive dysfunction in the first-episode schizophrenic patients and their biological parents.

Objective To investigate the executive functions in the first-episods schizophrenic patients and their biological parents.Methods Wisconsin card sorting test(WCST) was done in 32 schizophrenic patients who met DSM-IV criteria for schizophrenia,64 healthy parents of schizophrenic patients,32 healthy controls of schizophrenic patients and 64 healthy controls of schizophrenic patients' parents.The results of the WCST were compared respectively.Results In comparison with their controls respectively,the schizophrenia patients and their parents had poor performance on parameters of WCST for valuation including total correct items,total errors,continuous errors,non-continuous errors and correct number of categories(P0.01).However,there is no difference between WCST results of schizophrenia patients and those of their biological parents(P0.05).Conclusions The presence of executive dysfunctions in first-episode schizophrenia and their biological parents have been confirmed,but there is no difference between them.