While the present study focused on the influence of modality on verbal recognition memory in schizophrenia, it does not address whether abnormalities in patients are specific to linguistic or language-related aspects of episodic memory. One meta-analysis found that non-word stimuli yielded even larger effect sizes of compromised recognition memory performance in schizophrenia (Pelletier et al., 2005), and old/new ERP abnormalities in schizophrenia have been reported for unfamiliar faces that are difficult to verbalize (Guillem et al., 2001). To further address these issues of material specificity in a within-subjects design, we are now recording ERPs of larger samples of schizophrenia patients and healthy adults during continuous recognition memory tasks using both words and unfamiliar faces.
