Diametric effects of autism tendencies and psychosis proneness on attention control irrespective of task demands

Abstract

Our capacity to attend a target while ignoring irrelevant distraction impacts our ability to successfully interact with our environment. Previous reports have sometimes identified excessive distractor interference in both autism and schizophrenia spectrum disorders and in neurotypical individuals with high subclinical expressions of these conditions. Independent of task, we show that the direction of the effect of autism or psychosis traits on the suppression or rejection of a non-target item is diametrical. In Study 1, in which the presence of a salient non-target item hindered performance, higher autism traits were associated with better performance, while higher psychosis traits were associated with worse performance. In Study 2, in which the presence of a salient non-target item facilitated performance, a complete reversal of effects was observed. Future clinical interventions may be informed by the context-specific advantages we observed for the autism and psychosis spectra, and by the need to consider the diametric effects they yield.

Categorical and Dimensional Approaches to Examining the Joint Effect of Autism and Schizotypal Personality Disorder on Sustained Attention

“…This suggests that the PAUSS and PANSS positive symptoms are associated with diametric influences on sustained attention independent of the disorder. This is consistent with (i) the diametric model (52, 53)-which posits that ASD and SSD are characterized by opposing phenotypic patterns-, (ii) evidence suggesting that ASD and SSD can be characterized by opposing patterns of attentional abilities (3,54), and (iii) existing evidence suggesting that the presence of both disorders may be associated with attenuated impairments (3,27,38). Importantly, this pattern of association also suggests that the omission errors in ASD and SPD might be precipitated by different mechanisms, which is consistent with the notion that apparent overlaps between autism and schizophrenia spectrum disorders might be precipitated by different cognitive styles or biases (55,56).…”

How Cognitive Control, Autistic and Schizotypal Traits Shape Context Adaptation of Divergent Thinking

“…However, it is important to also note, as is also evident from Figures 3c and 4c, that a shift from reactive to proactive control strategy greatly diminishes the ability of individuals with high positive schizotypal traits to flexibly generate unique ideas across contexts. This is consistent with research in patients with schizophrenia (Boudewyn, Scangos, Ranganath, & Carter, 2020;Lesh et al, 2013) and neurotypicals with high positive schizotypal traits (Abu-Akel et al, 2018) who exhibited a decline in performance in tasks requiring proactive compared to reactive control. The notion of latent inhibition-the inability to filter out previously experienced events or contexts as irrelevant-which is considered an endophenotype of schizotypy (Lubow & Gewirtz, 1995) and specifically positive schizotypy , might help explain the uneven performance of these individuals across contexts when deploying a proactive control strategy.…”

“…With respect to cognitive control, research suggests that individuals with elevated positive schizotypal traits or at-risk state for psychosis are associated with deficits in applying proactive control and appear to have no major deficit in, and even a bias toward reactive control (Abu-Akel et al, 2018;Niendam et al, 2014). In the context of creative thinking research, it has been shown that the association of positive schizotypy with increased ability of unusual associations-defined as statistically infrequent or "unique" associations-was not related to proactive interferences, that is, when irrelevant and older information had to be deleted from memory (Rominger, Weiss, Fink, Schulter, & Papousek, 2011.…”

“…We further hypothesized that this association would likely be moderated by the relative levels of autistic and positive schizotypal traits within the individual, given evidence suggesting that these traits might be associated with contrasting cognitive control strategies and effects on divergent thinking. Specifically, if autistic and positive schizotypal traits were, respectively, associated with proactive and reactive control strategy preferences (Abu-Akel et al, 2018;Niendam et al, 2014;Spaniol et al, 2018), it might be conceivable to predict better context adaptation with increasing autistic traits and greater proactive tendencies, as well as better context adaptation with increasing positive schizotypal traits and greater reactive tendencies.…”

Delayed reactive distractor suppression in aging populations.

“…Additional converging evidence comes from studies of young adults with high expression of psychosis proneness, who have been shown to favor reactive distractor suppression relative to proactive distractor suppression (Abu-Akel et al, 2016a;2016b;2016c). In the t-task described above, performance benefits from the presence of the salient distractor scale with the expression of psychosis proneness (Abu-Akel et al, 2018), highlighting that this paradigm is sensitive enough to detect variations in the magnitude of engagement of reactive distractor suppression.…”