[Vulnerability to schizophrenia: neuropsychological performance and schizotypal personality traits]

Although some neuropsychological deficits and a high rate of schizotypal personality disorders have been found in the first-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia, few studies have looked for a link between those two types of potential marker of vulnerability to this disease. The aims of this study were: 1) to confirm some executive/attentional deficits in a group of first-degree relatives including not only siblings but also parents; 2) to evaluate the schizotypal traits using the French version of 4 self-reporting scales proposed by Chapman and his colleagues; 3) to look for a dependence or independence between the neuropsychological performance and the scores on the scales of schizotypy. Twenty four patients with schizophrenia, 48 of their first-degree relatives and 31 controls were included in the study. Both attentional tests (a Digit Symbol Substitution Test and a Degraded Stimulus-Continuous Performance Test) confirmed a worse performance in the patient and in the first-degree relative groups than in the control group. On the opposite side, the executive performance assessed by the Wisconsin Sorting Card Test, was poorer in the patient group only. Scores of the first-degree relative group on the social anhedonia, physical anhedonia and perceptual aberrations scales were at an intermediate level between those of the patient and control groups; moreover, only scores on the social anhedonia scale tended to be significantly higher in the first-degree relative group than in the control group. Among the first-degree relative group, the only significant correlation found was between the number of perseverative errors on the WCST and the scores on the physical anhedonia scale.