The relationship between negative symptoms and cognition in schizophrenia is not clear, a number of authors whom studied this relationship came up with inconsistent findings and meta-analyses show that there is a small moderate associations between the two domains.

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between cognition and the primary negative symptoms sub-domains.

Sixty-seven female patients with schizophrenia were evaluated using PANSS ans NSA-16 scales. Correlation and regression analyses were used in the present study to investigate the relationship between the primary negative symptoms sub-domains obtained by using the principal component analysis, and cognition evaluated with the PANSS using the 5 factor model as described by Lindenmayer.

No relationship was found between the PANSS Cognitive factor and Negative factor, but when investigating the relationship of the Cognitive PANSS factor with the negative sub-domains: diminished expression (DE) and avolition-apathy (AA), it was shown that there is a significant association between cognition and AA domain, but there was shown no association with the DE domain, and there was just a small association with the composit score of the NAS-16.

Our study reveals the relative independence of cognitive factor from the negative domain of the psychopathology, even though the association with AA domain was clear. These findings also support the need of using appropriate assessment tools in order to get a refined understanding of the phenomenology of schizophrenia.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.