Hypohedonia in schizophrenia

The affective disorder in schizophrenia is an important manifestation of the schizophrenic illness. Such clinical features of joylessness, interpersonal aversion, and affective blunting have been considered by Rado and Meehl to represent a neurophysiological deficit in pleasure capacity which they termed anhedonia, but is more aptly characterized by the term hypohedonia. A free-recall task employing 24 affectively laden words presented in random order over nine trials was given to a carefully selected group of nonpsychotic hospitalized schizophrenics, hospitalized nonschizophrenics, and normals. The results of the study demonstrate that normals remember pleasant words to a significantly greater extent than upleasant words. This Pollyanna tendency or the tendency to utilize pleasant words over upleasant words has been described by Osgood as a stable cross-cultural phenomenon. By contrast, the schizophrenics show a significantly lower recall of pleasant words when compared with normals, although they remember unpleasant words to a comparable degree as normals. These findings provide experimental support for the hypohedonia hypothesis in schizophrenia. The nonshcizophrenic patients recall pleasant and unpleasant words to a significantly greater degree than neutral words. They are thus affectively governed in the free-recall task and seem equally sensitized to both pleasant and unpleasant affect in their mnemonic processing.