Dimensional approaches to experimental psychopathology of schizophrenia: shift learning and report of psychotic-like experiences in college students

Abstract

Adopting a dimensional approach to experimental psychopathology, and taking into account inconsistencies in the previous literature, we examined whether reports of psychoticlike experiences in undergraduate students were associated with shift-learning deficits, akin to those seen in schizophrenia. The participants (N ¼ 72) were tested on a new compound stimulus discrimination task before and after a target shift, and were administered a multidimensional schizotypy inventory (O-LIFE). Performance impairment following a target shift was associated with the negative (introvertive anhedonia) and the impulsive (impulsive nonconformity) dimension of schizotypy, but not with the positive (unusual experiences), nor the disorganised (cognitive disorganisation) dimension. None of the schizotypy measures were associated with performance on discrimination learning before the target shift. The obtained results are in line with past evidence that shift learning is associated with the severity of the negative symptomatology of schizophrenia. The possibility that psychotic-like features may

Extreme Elemental Processing in a High Schizotypy Population: Relation to Cognitive Deficits

“…The relationship between IntAnh scores and performance on the biconditional discrimination and recognition tasks is entirely consistent with previous reports linking cognitive dysfunction with the negative symptoms of schizophrenia (Andreasen & Olsen, 1982;Cornblatt et al, 1985;Merriam, Kay, Opler, & Hegarty, 1990;Thoma et al, 2007). Moreover, negative symptoms (as measured by Introvertive Anhedonia) have been linked to impairments on both blocking (Haselgrove & Evans, 2010;Martins Serra et al, 2001;Moran et al, 2003) and shift learning paradigms (Tsakanikos & Reed, 2005), performance on which is also impaired in schizophrenia (Blocking: Moran, Owen, Crookes, Al-Uzri, & Reveley, 2008;Set-shifting: Leeson et al, 2009).…”

The Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences (O-LIFE) schizotypy scale in psychiatry

“…The experimental results also show that so called shift-learning deficits, similar to those in schizophrenia, are associated with negative schizotypal dimensions (introvertive anhedonia) and impulsivity (impulsive nonconformity), but not with the level of cognitive disorganization. None of the schizotypy dimensions had a noticeable impact on learning, before the target shift, which confirms the notion that ability to change the way of thinking in changing conditions is related to the severity of negative symptoms of schizophrenia [27].…”

Teorías contemporáneas de la motivación: una perspectiva aplicada

“…Esta tarea no puede ser realizada por personas con un trastorno esquizofrénico (Oades & Sartory, 1997). Usando esta información, Tsanikos & Reed (2005) diseñaron un experimento donde estudiantes universitarios de pregrado fueron evaluados en una tarea que implicaba un estímulo compuesto para discriminación y al mismo tiempo se les administró un inventario multidimensional de esquizotipia. Se encontró que luego del cambio de estímulo, el desempeño de los participantes se encontraba asociado a dos dimensiones (la negativa y la impulsiva) de la esquizotipia.…”