Do People With Schizophrenia Comprehend What They Read?

Although people with schizophrenia appear to be able to read aloud, their reading comprehension has been little tested. This study asks, Do people with schizophrenia have deficits in reading comprehension compared with well controls and, if so, what are the type and severity of those deficits? The reading comprehension of 30 people with chronic schizophrenia was compared with a group of 30 people without a psychiatric diagnosis. The groups were matched for sex and age and had similar intelligence scores. The Reading Comprehension Battery for Aphasia (RCBA) was used to obtain a profile of reading comprehension skills, and intelligence was estimated using the National Adult Reading Test. Schizophrenia subjects took significantly longer to complete the RCBA and obtained significantly poorer scores than did controls on the RCBA total and on all but one RCBA subtest. Although these findings could have serious implications for the presentation of written material such as consent and information forms, further research is needed to determine how these deficits impact on functional reading and whether or not they can be addressed.