B – 18 Verbal Context Processing in a Sample of Forensic Inpatients with Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorder: An Exploratory Study

Abstract Objective This exploratory study compared verbal context processing performance of a sample of Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorder (SSD) inpatients (n = 50) committed to a forensic state hospital to samples of SSD outpatients (n = 145), individuals with other psychiatric conditions (substance abuse group, n = 85; mood disorder group, n = 80), and healthy controls (n = 267). Method Adult psychiatric inpatients committed to a large forensic hospital in Southern California were identified from an archival database of neuropsychological evaluation from January 2017 through June 2020. The SSD outpatient sample was obtained from a study by Savla et al. (2011) that included 145 adults with SSD. Data from non-SSD psychiatric groups and healthy controls were gathered from the Enhanced Nathan Kline Institute-Rockland Sample (Nooner et al., 2012), an openly accessible sample of participants from the community. Word Context Test (WCT) of Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEFS) was used as the measure of interest for verbal context processing. Results SSD inpatients (M = 1.90) and outpatients (M = 7.5) had significantly lower context processing performance than all other groups (p < .001) with SSD inpatients demonstrating lower performance than SSD outpatients (p < .001; see Figure 1). Conclusion Even when considering verbal intelligence, results suggest patients with SSD have significantly reduced context sensitivity relative to patients with other psychiatric diagnoses and the degree of reduced context sensitivity is associated with SSD severity (i.e., inpatient-outpatient status). Deficits in context processing are particularly salient among patients with SSD.