Figure 1. Spatial working memory task and performance in healthy controls, schizotypal personality disorder patients and borderline personality disorder patients.

A: An example of the visual-spatial working memory task is shown. In the task, blue tokens are “hidden” behind colored squares on the screen and the participant is asked to locate the tokens using the process of elimination until they have found enough tokens to fill up an empty column on the side of the screen. Only one token is hidden on each trial and a token is never hidden more than once in the same location. B: Scatterplot for performance scores on the Spatial Working Memory Task are shown for healthy control, SPD, and BPD participants. The horizontal bar represents the unadjusted means for each group and are as follows: (SPD: 38.67±25.14; BPD: 19.33±12.04; HC: 22.13±17.24). Note that two participants had a score of 32 in the HC group; two participants had a score of 0, two had a score of 27, two had a score of 82 in the SPD group; and two participants had a score of 17, three had a score of 7 in the BPD group. Adjusted means (adjusted for age and years of education) are as follows: (SPD: 37.16±16.32; BPD: 17.47±16.37; HC: 25.93±16.52). There was a significant Group × Error score interaction, F(2,47) = 6.54, p = 0.003 and SPD participants performed significantly worse than the BPD participants (p = 0.0008, Fisher's LSD test) and healthy controls (p = 0.005, Fisher's LSD test).