The effect of associative strength on semantic priming in schizophrenia

The present research was designed to investigate the pattern of semantic priming in schizophrenia as a function of strength of association (or semantic distance between concepts in the semantic network). Thirty schizophrenia patients, without formal thought disorder, and twenty-nine healthy controls participated in a lexical decision task in which prime-target associative strength (strong, weak and not related) and stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA: 250ms and 750ms) were manipulated. Patients and controls showed the same associative strength effect on RTs. In the short SOA condition priming effects were obtained for both strong and weak prime-target associative conditions. However in the long SOA priming was only significant for strongly associated pairs. This pattern of priming effects was similar in both groups, with higher priming on the short SOA and strong association conditions. Altogether results suggest that automatic semantic spreading activation is unimpaired in schizophrenia patients without formal thought disorder. These results are in line with the general evidence of impaired implicit priming observed only in patients with formal thought disorder. At the same time patients use context as controls to facilitate word processing. Finally, these findings evidence that, prime-target associative strength could moderate results in studies of semantic memory deficits in schizophrenia.