The aim of this study was to compare WAIS‑IV and WMS‑IV performance in recent‑onset schizophrenia (ROS) with performance in a demographically matched healthy comparison group. Forty‑three ROS inpatients were compared with 43 healthy individuals drawn from the Croatian standardization samples for the WAIS‑IV and WMS‑IV and matched to patients on age, sex and years of education. Primary analyses used separate MANCOVAs (Pillai’s Trace) on WAIS‑IV and WMS‑IV index scores with Group as the between‑subjects factor and years of education as a covariate. Significant multivariate effects were followed by univariate ANCOVAs on each index, with Holm correction across the nine index tests. Clinical interpretability was summarized by the proportion of participants falling below −1 SD and −1.5 SD relative to the control‑group distribution. Large deficits were observed on WAIS‑IV Processing Speed and Working Memory, with sizable effects on Perceptual Reasoning and Verbal Comprehension. WMS‑IV showed very large decrements in Immediate and Delayed Memory and large reductions in Visual Memory and Visual Working Memory. These findings suggest that broad cognitive impairment is already evident near illness onset, with slowed processing and episodic‑memory dysfunction being prominent targets for early assessment and remediation.

schizophrenia, cognition, WAIS‑IV, WMS‑IV, processing speed, episodic memory