Intact Serial Dependence in Schizophrenia: Evidence from an Orientation Adjustment Task

For a long time, it was proposed that schizophrenia (SCZ) patients rely more on sensory input and less on prior information, potentially leading to reduced serial dependence-ie, a reduced influence of prior stimuli in perceptual tasks. However, existing evidence is constrained to a few paradigms, and whether reduced serial dependence reflects a general characteristic of the disease remains unclear.

We investigated serial dependence in 26 SCZ patients and 27 healthy controls (CNT) to evaluate the influence of prior stimuli in a classic visual orientation adjustment task, a paradigm not previously tested in this context.

As expected, the CNT group exhibited clear serial dependence, with systematic biases toward the orientation of stimuli shown in the preceding trials. Serial dependence in SCZ patients was largely comparable to that in the CNT group.

These findings challenge the prevailing notion of reduced serial dependence in SCZ, suggesting that observed differences between healthy CNT and patients may depend on aspects of perceptual or cognitive processing that are currently not understood.