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Increased orienting to unexpected action outcomes in schizophrenia
Elena Núñez Castellar1, Femke Houtman, Wim Gevers
1Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University Ghent, Belgium.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
|March 7, 2012
Summary
Schizophrenia patients show increased post-error slowing with short inter-trial intervals, contrary to previous findings. Matching error rates is crucial for accurate comparisons in performance monitoring research.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Psychiatry
Background:
- Inconsistent findings exist regarding performance monitoring deficits in schizophrenia.
- Previous studies suggest reduced post-error slowing, but results vary significantly.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate performance monitoring in schizophrenia, addressing inconsistencies in prior research.
- To examine the role of error rates in post-error slowing discrepancies.
- To explore the relationship between symptom severity and performance in schizophrenia patients.
Main Methods:
- Developed an individualized error rate matching procedure by adjusting task difficulty.
- Utilized a color discrimination task to compare schizophrenia patients and controls.
- Measured post-error slowing under varying inter-trial interval (ITI) conditions.
Main Results:
- Individualized matching eliminated accuracy differences between schizophrenia patients and controls.
- Higher Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) scores correlated with increased task difficulty in patients.
- Schizophrenia patients exhibited increased, not decreased, post-error slowing with a short ITI.
Conclusions:
- Error rate matching is essential for accurate comparisons of performance monitoring in schizophrenia.
- Increased post-error slowing in schizophrenia may be linked to distractibility and the orienting account.
- Findings challenge the notion of universal performance monitoring deficits in schizophrenia.
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