Spatial, object, and affective working memory in social anhedonia: an exploratory study

Abstract 

The domain-specificity of working memory was examined in psychosis-prone individuals with elevated social anhedonia scores. A group of individuals with deviant scores on the revised Social Anhedonia Scale (n=43) were compared with a normal control group (n=39) on delayed match-to-sample tasks involving spatial, identity, and affective information. The social anhedonia group performed less well on the spatial and emotion delayed match-to-sample tasks relative to the normally hedonic group. The two groups did not differ in terms of their performance on the identity delayed match-to-sample task. Although the social anhedonia group reported less positive affect, greater negative affect, and more alexithymic tendencies relative to the control group, there were no significant associations between these personality traits and working memory performance. In summary, the findings suggest that poorer working memory performance is not domain-specific in socially anhedonic individuals. The authors conclude that the socially anhedonic group's relatively poor performance on the emotion delayed match-to-sample task reflects difficulty and/or inefficiency in handling cognitively taxing tasks.

Keywords:  Working memory, Social anhedonia, Emotion, Alexithymia