A large correlational study took a latent-variable approach to the generality of executive control by testing the individual-differences structure of executive-attention capabilities and assessing their prediction of schizotypy, a multidimensional construct (with negative, positive, disorganized, and paranoid factors) conveying risk for schizophrenia. Although schizophrenia is convincingly linked to executive deficits, the schizotypy literature is equivocal. Subjects completed tasks of working memory capacity (WMC), attention restraint (inhibiting prepotent responses), and attention constraint (focusing visual attention amid distractors), the latter two in an effort to fractionate the “inhibition” construct. We also assessed mind-wandering propensity (via in-task thought probes) and coefficient of variation in response times (RT CoV) from several tasks as more novel indices of executive attention. WMC, attention restraint, attention constraint, mind wandering, and RT CoV were correlated but separable constructs, indicating some distinctions among “attention control” abilities; WMC correlated more strongly with attentional restraint than constraint, and mind wandering correlated more strongly with attentional restraint, attentional constraint, and RT CoV than with WMC. Across structural models, no executive construct predicted negative schizotypy and only mind wandering and RT CoV consistently (but modestly) predicted positive, disorganized, and paranoid schizotypy; stalwart executive constructs in the schizophrenia literature — WMC and attention restraint — showed little to no predictive power, beyond restraint’s prediction of paranoia. Either executive deficits are consequences rather than risk factors for schizophrenia, or executive failures barely precede or precipitate diagnosable schizophrenia symptoms.

Undergraduates (n = 274) participated in a week-long daily-life experience-sampling study of mind-wandering after being assessed for executive-control abilities (working memory capacity [WMC], attention-restraint ability, attention-constraint ability, propensity for task-unrelated thoughts [TUTs]) and personality traits. Electronic devices probed subjects 8 times/day about their current thoughts and context. WMC and attention abilities predicted laboratory TUTs, but they only predicted daily-life mind-wandering as a function of subjects’ momentary attempts to concentrate. This pattern replicates prior daily-life findings but conflicts with laboratory findings. Personality factors also yielded divergent lab-life associations: Only neuroticism predicted laboratory TUTs but only openness predicted daily-life mind-wandering (both predicted daily-life mind-wandering content). Cognitive and personality factors also predicted dimensions of everyday thought other than mind-wandering, such as subjective controllability. Mind-wandering in people’s daily environments has different correlates (and perhaps causes) than TUTs during controlled and artificial laboratory tasks. Thus, mind-wandering theories based solely on lab phenomena may be incomplete.

The present study examined the predictive validity of psychometrically assessed positive and negative schizotypy in the Chapmans' 10-year longitudinal data set. Schizotypy provides a useful construct for understanding the etiology and development of schizophrenia and related disorders. Schizotypy and schizophrenia share a common multidimensional structure that includes positive and negative symptom dimensions. Recent cross-sectional studies have supported the validity of psychometric positive and negative schizotypy; however, the present study is the first to examine the predictive validity of these dimensions. The Chapmans' longitudinal data provided an ideal opportunity because of the large sample size, high reassessment rate, and extended interval between assessments. A total of 534 psychometric high-risk and control participants were initially assessed, and 95% of this sample was reinterviewed 10 years later. As hypothesized, positive and negative schizotypy uniquely predicted the development of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. At the reassessment, both positive and negative schizotypy predicted psychotic-like, schizotypal, and paranoid symptoms, as well as poorer adjustment. The positive dimension was associated with mood and substance use disorders and mental health treatment. Negative schizotypy was associated with schizoid symptoms and social impairment at the follow-up. The results extend the growing validity findings for psychometrically assessed positive and negative schizotypy by demonstrating that they are associated with the development of differential patterns of symptoms and impairment.

No abstract

This article reports on the development of a new self-report questionnaire measure of schizotypy - the Multidimensional Schizotypy Scale (MSS). Schizotypy offers a useful and unifying construct for understanding schizophrenia-spectrum psychopathology. Questionnaire measures have been widely used to assess schizotypy and have greatly informed our understanding of the construct. However, available measures suffer from a number of limitations, including lack of a clear conceptual framework, outdated wording, unclear factor structure, and psychometric shortcomings. The MSS is based on current conceptual models and taps positive, negative, and disorganized dimensions of schizotypy. The derivation sample included 6265 participants sampled from four universities and Amazon Mechanical Turk. A separate sample of 1000 participants from these sources was used to examine the psychometric properties of the final subscales. Scale development employed classical test theory, item response theory, and differential item function methods. The positive schizotypy and negative schizotypy subscales contain 26 items each, and the disorganized schizotypy subscale contains 25 items. The psychometric properties were almost identical in the derivation and validation samples. All three subscales demonstrated good to excellent reliability, high item-scale correlations, and good item and test curve characteristics. The MSS appears to provide a promising measure for assessing schizotypy.