Schizophrenia is a complex and often debilitating illness. While the disease is thought to be similar across ethnic and cultural groups, there are reports of numerous cross-cultural differences as well. In Hispanics in particular, differences in disease conceptualization, symptom expression, and pharmacological treatment response have all been reported, compared with non-Hispanic populations. It is unclear to what extent these differences represent biological versus sociocultural influences. Cognitive deficits associated with schizophrenia have not been adequately addressed in Hispanics to determine whether these symptoms differ as well. For example, deficits in working memory have been identified in schizophrenic patients and their first-degree relatives. Although there is some evidence that working memory span can vary as a function of language, working memory has never been directly investigated in schizophrenic Spanish or Spanish-English speakers. Learning deficits have also been identified in schizophrenic patients but there is reason to doubt whether some bilingual Spanish-speaking schizophrenics will demonstrate the same degree of learning impairment reported in non-Hispanic monolingual samples. Specifically, evidence from normal bilingual individuals suggests that the two languages of the bilingual may share a common semantic representational system and that some aspects of the organization and encoding of semantic information may be facilitated in bilinguals. If this relationship holds for bilingual individuals affected with schizophrenia, then bilingualism may function as a protective """"""""buffer"""""""" against the deficits in learning previously identified in this population. Experiment 1 will seek to establish that in normal subjects, verbal working memory span is equivalent in bilingual and monolingual Hispanic and non-Hispanic normal subjects. Further, Experiment 1 will investigate whether Hispanic schizophrenics have similar reductions in working memory span compared with controls, as previously identified in non-Hispanic samples. In Experiment 2, we will assess whether bilingual schizophrenics are more efficient than monolingual schizophrenics, matched for working memory span, in utilizing a cognitive strategy to organize semantic information, thereby mitigating learning impairments in the bilingual patients.
