Devaluation of Rewards for the Future Is Associated With Schizotypal Personality Features

Abstract

Objective Empirical evidence has suggested that schizophrenia is associated with dysfunctions in the reward system and working memory. However, little is known about individuals at risk for schizophrenia. In particular, it is not known if those with schizotypal personality features will show similar deficits in these two domains. This study examined whether individuals with schizotypal personality disorder features will subjectively devalue potential rewards in the future and show changes in their decision‐making behaviour, compared with healthy controls, and whether this devaluation is inversely associated with working memory performance. Method A total of 44 participants with schizotypal personality features and 22 healthy control participants without schizotypal personality features completed the Monetary‐Choice Questionnaire, the Cambridge Gambling Task, and number and letter span tasks, which assessed delay‐discounting rate, decision‐making behaviour, and working memory, respectively. Results The results showed that participants with schizotypal personality features, especially those with negative features, valued delayed rewards in the future to a lesser extent than healthy control participants. However, there was no significant group difference in decision‐making on the Cambridge Gambling Task. Moreover, the delay‐discounting rate of individuals with schizotypal personality features correlated significantly with working memory performance. Conclusion The findings suggest that people with schizotypal personality features may be impaired in future reward perception and that this impairment is related to their working memory ability, although their capacity to make decisions is not affected.

Future thinking is related to lower delay discounting than recent thinking, regardless of the magnitude of the reward, in individuals with schizotypy

“…Without individuals without schizotypy, we could not directly compare their performance in delay discounting task. However, several studies have shown that individuals with schizotypy demonstrated more impulsive choice (Cai et al, 2019;Li et al, 2016). Moreover, the main aim of this study was to explore whether EFT was related to lower delay discounting in individuals with schizotypy compared to ERT and our findings confirmed this.…”

“…Schizophrenia has been considered as a continuum (Ettinger, Meyhöfer, Steffens, Wagner, & Koutsouleris, 2014); schizotypy is within the continuum (Siever, Kalus, & Keefe, 1993) and demonstrate similar but milder neurobiological (Siever et al, 1995(Siever et al, , 2002 and cognitive (Barch et al, 2004;Ettinger et al, 2014;Siever et al, 2002) deficits as in schizophrenia. Previous studies revealed that individuals with negative schizotypy had higher discounting rate than healthy controls (Cai et al, 2019;Li et al, 2016), indicating that individuals at risk for schizophrenia had greater preference for immediate rewards. Given that poor performance in delay discounting task may cause bad consequences (e.g., a high discounting rate can be a high risk factor for drug addiction; Bickel, Koffarnus, Moody, & Wilson, 2014), it is important to reduce discounting rate and improve the ability to resist immediate rewards in these individuals with some strategies.…”

Delay discounting and affective priming in individuals with negative schizotypy

“…Our finding of a steeper decrease in delay discounting in individuals with high levels of negative schizotypy replicates the findings from . They compared the delay discounting rate (from the Monetary-Choice Questionnaire) among participants with positive schizotypal personality features, participants with negative schizotypal personality features and controls, and found that participants with negative schizotypal personality features valued delayed rewards in the future less than the other two groups (Li et al, 2016b). The results from Li et al (2016b) and the present study both suggest that negative schizotypy may be strongly associated with alterations in anticipatory reward processing.…”

Neuroanatomical correlates of grit: Growth mindset mediates the association between gray matter structure and trait grit in late adolescence

“…According to the method developed in previous studies (Kirby, ; Kirby et al, ), we calculated the ln k value as the measure of delayed gratification, with higher ln k values representing lower delayed gratification. The Chinese version of the MCQ has adequate reliability and validity in Chinese populations (Li et al, ; Liu et al, ). We have used the MCQ in our previous studies and found good internal consistency (Wang et al, 2017a, 2017c).…”

“…Chinese populations (Li et al, 2016b;Liu et al, 2016). We have used the MCQ in our previous studies and found good internal consistency (Wang et al, 2017a(Wang et al, , 2017c).…”