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Updated: Aug 23, 2026

Measurement of Fronto-limbic Activity Using an Emotional Oddball Task in Children with Familial High Risk for Schizophrenia
13:08

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Published on: December 2, 2015

Psychometric deviance measured by MMPI in adoptees at high risk for schizophrenia and their adoptive controls

Virva Siira1, Karl-Erik Wahlberg, Jouko Miettunen

  • 1Department of Psychiatry, University of Oulu, Box 5000, FIN-90014 Oulu, Finland. virva.siira@oulu.fi

Journal of Personality Assessment
|July 24, 2004
PubMed

Psychometric deviance in personality traits as assessed by the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI; Dahlstrom, Welsh, & Dahlstrom, 1982) was compared between adopted-away, high-risk (HR) offspring of schizophrenic biologic mothers and low-risk (LR) controls. A subsample of the Finnish Adoptive Family Study (Tienari et al., 2000) included 60 HR adoptees and 76 LR control adoptees who were tested by the MMPI before the onset of any psychiatric disorder at the mean age of 24 years. The HR group was found to be distinguishable based on deviant scores on the scales HOS and HYP, indicating emotional unresponsiveness, restricted affectivity, and decreased energy. These may also be considered possible premorbid and prodromal signs of future schizophrenia among the HR adoptees.

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