Spatial Working Memory Across Psychiatric Disorders in Young Adults

Abstract

Objective: Impairments in spatial working memory (SWM) have been observed in several disparate psychiatric conditions.The present study investigated how SWM varied across a range of psychiatric disorders in a large sample of young adults using the Spatial Working Memory test from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery.Methods: A sample of 575 participants aged 18-29 years was enrolled from the general community and evaluated for psychiatric disorders using several screening evaluations.Performance on the SWM test was assessed, with outcome measures of strategy and total errors.Using Z-scores and Cohen's d effect sizes, SWM was compared between each psychiatric disorder and healthy controls.Results: The majority of psychiatric diagnoses examined demonstrated SWM deficits in both strategy and total errors.Large effect sizes in strategy were observed for bulimia, post-traumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder, social phobia, and agoraphobia.Large effect sizes in total errors were observed for agoraphobia, major depressive disorder, social phobia, intermittent explosive disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bulimia, post-traumatic stress disorder, and gambling disorder.