Disentangling the attentional deficit in schizophrenia: pointers from schizotypy

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Psychopathology

Background:

• Schizophrenia is theorized to involve attentional allocation abnormalities.
• These abnormalities may extend to healthy individuals with high schizotypy.
• Previous evidence is open to alternative interpretations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a less equivocal measure of attentional processing during learning.
• To investigate attentional processing in healthy individuals with high schizotypy.

Main Methods:

• Introduction of a learned irrelevance paradigm.
• Assessment of attentional processing during the learning phase.
• Measurement of schizotypy dimensions, particularly positive symptoms.

Main Results:

• A reliable reduction in learned irrelevance was observed.
• This reduction was found in healthy participants scoring high on schizotypy related to positive symptoms of schizophrenia.

Conclusions:

• The findings support the hypothesis of attentional allocation deficits in high schizotypy.
• These deficits may extend to schizophrenia, indicating a spectrum of attention dysfunction.