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Abnormal orienting in schizotypal personality disorder
1Dept. of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles 90089-1061, USA.
Schizophrenia Bulletin
|January 1, 1997
Summary
Schizotypal personality disorder patients exhibit abnormal skin conductance habituation to stimuli. This orienting deficit may link to working memory and prefrontal impairments in psychosis spectrum disorders.
Area of Science:
- Psychophysiology
- Clinical Psychology
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Previous research indicates skin conductance (SC) orienting abnormalities in psychosis-prone individuals.
- No prior studies have investigated SC orienting habituation in diagnosed schizotypal personality disorder (SPD).
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess habituation to orienting stimuli in clinical schizotypal subjects.
- To examine the relationship between schizotypy dimensions and orienting deficits.
Main Methods:
- Study 1: Compared SC orienting habituation in 13 clinical SPD subjects (high SPQ scores) versus 30 controls (low SPQ scores).
- Study 2: Correlated individual schizotypy differences with a dimensional measure of orienting deficit in 30 new subjects.
Main Results:
- Normal subjects demonstrated expected SC orienting habituation across trials.
- Clinical schizotypal subjects failed to show a response decrement in SC orienting over the first three trials.
- Individual schizotypy scores significantly correlated with the orienting deficit measure.
Conclusions:
- Clinical schizotypal subjects exhibit impaired habituation of skin conductance orienting responses.
- This retarded habituation may stem from deficits in preattentive processing, potentially linked to working memory and prefrontal dysfunction in SPD and schizophrenia.