Spatial selective attention in schizophrenic, affective disorder, and normal subjects

Schizophrenic, affective disorder, and normal subjects performed tasks involving exogenous (automatic) and endogenous (voluntary) attention. In the exogenous attention task, schizophrenic subjects demonstrated a greater benefit in response time than did normal subjects. In the endogenous attention task, however, schizophrenic subjects showed a smaller benefit in response time than did normal subjects. These results are consistent with a model of schizophrenia that predicts a deficit in voluntary (endogenous) control, and a disinhibition and therefore enhancement of the automatic (exogenous) processes of spatial selective attention. Affective disorder subjects did not demonstrate a greater benefit in response time than normal subjects in the exogenous attention task, but did show a smaller benefit in response time than normal subjects in the endogenous attention task. The somewhat similar pattern of behavior of schizophrenic and affective disorder subjects suggests that abnormal spatial selective attentional processes may not be specific to schizophrenia.