Self-imagination can enhance memory in individuals with schizophrenia

Effect of self-imagination on memory for older adults and aMCI patients

Imagining an event from a personal perspective has been found to be able to enhance memory for words and sentences for healthy younger adults and brain-injured patients. However, little is known about how people with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) respond to self-imagination, in comparison to healthy older adults. In the current study, participants were asked to process a group of objects using either a self-imagination approach or a baseline strategy in which the self was not heavily involved. Self-imagination shows a mnemonic advantage over the control strategy, though this pattern emerged more clearly for healthy older adults. Furthermore, suggestive evidence indicates that cognitive ability supports self-reference benefits for healthy older adults, but not aMCI patients. These findings extended previous research to reveal the effectiveness of self-imagination for older adults using pictorial stimuli and supported the viewpoint that aMCI could qualitatively change the way that cognitive resources are engaged.

Cognition and Psychopathology: Overview

The bidirectional relation of cognition and psychopathology is discussed in historical context as an introduction to the special issue of Journal of Cognitive Education and Psychology devoted to contemporary research on this topic. Cognition refers to the processes by which information is transformed, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used. Psychopathology refers to disorders in behavior, cognition, and/or perception. Although rooted in studies of major psychiatric disorders and general intelligence, the field has moved to include developmental disabilities, neurological impairment, and less severe psychological disturbance on the one hand and finer grained cognitive processes on the other as well as a constant concern with language issues. Special methods of investigation reveal subtle effects but important facets of the cognition–psychopathology relation.