Читать книгу Abnormal Psychology - William J. Ray - Страница 174

Neuropsychological tests can help identify cognitive changes associated with a particular disorder. For example, there is a rare occurrence of four sisters who all developed schizophrenia in their twenties. The Genain sisters were monozygotic quadruplets born in the United States in the early 1930s (see photo on this page). These sisters have been studied throughout their lives in terms of genetic makeup as well as cognitive functioning. When the sisters were 66 years of age, Allan Mirsky and his colleagues (2000) readministered a number of neuropsychological tests including the WAIS, the CPT, and WCST. The scores for each sister at age 66 were compared with their performance at ages 27 and 51. By showing that the test scores of the sisters over their lifetime had not changed, these researchers were able to show that cognitive decline is not part of schizophrenia.