Distinct Attentional Control Profiles during Language Comprehension in Major Mental Health Disorders

The current study combined behavioral and EEG measures to investigate variations in attentional state during comprehension of spoken stories in a clinical sample that included participants with several major mental health disorders that often feature attentional control difficulties.

Participants with schizophrenia (N=62), bipolar disorder (N=44), major depressive disorder (N=51) and psychiatrically healthy controls (N=82) completed a story-listening task and were periodically interrupted by attention probes. Attention probes assessed three different states of engagement via self-reports: on-task attention, partially off-task split-attention, and fully off-task lapsed attention. EEG was recorded to examine corresponding changes in periodic alpha-band (8-13 Hz) power.

We found that all patient groups reported significantly less time fully on-task during story listening than did control participants, but that individual patient groups reported distinct patterns of off-task attention. Whereas reports of fully-lapsed attention dominated off-task reports for participants with schizophrenia, participants with major depressive disorder reported a higher incidence of experiencing a distracted or split attentional state. The EEG results provided additional evidence that the three self-report attention probe categories tapped into biologically distinguishable attentional states, with split attention and fully lapsed attention associated with distinct neural signatures relative to on-task attention. Periodic alpha power was modulated by attentional state in all groups, although there were significant group differences.

Our results demonstrate distinct behavioral and neurophysiological attentional control profiles in schizophrenia and major depressive disorder compared to control participants during language comprehension.