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

Abstract

The cognitive deficits observed in schizophrenia have been characterized as a failure to utilize task-setting information to guide behaviour, especially in situations in which there is response conflict. Recently, we have provided support for this account; high schizotypy individuals demonstrated inferior biconditional discrimination performance compared to low scorers, but were not impaired on a simple discrimination that did not require the use of task-setting cues. These results may, however, also be explained by the way in which individuals with high schizotypy process stimulus compounds. Here, we examine the initial approaches to solving biconditional and control discrimination tasks of participants with high and low schizotypy scores. In particular, we focus on performance during the first block of training trials to capture processing style before the acquisition of the discrimination tasks. Participants scoring highly on the introvertive anhedonia subscale (which has been allied to the negative and cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia) demonstrated better biconditional performance during the first block of training trials than did low-schizotypy individuals, consistent with a highly elemental approach to stimulus processing. Subsequent recognition tests confirmed this analysis demonstrating that the pattern of performance observed in participants with high schizotypy was associated with a failure to discriminate conjunctions of items that had been seen before from those that had not. These results suggest that the negative/cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia may reflect an extreme bias towards elemental, as opposed to configural, processing of stimulus conjunctions.

Impaired perceptual processing of facial expression categorization in social anhedonia

“…Although novel, this view is broadly consistent with previous finding of altered perceptual strategies in schizophrenia, a clinical condition characterized by social anhedonia (Blanchard, Horan, & Brown, 2001), such that schizophrenia patients as compared to normal people manifested a restricted visual scanpath characterized by an overreliance on sequential or featural processing (Toh, Rossell, & Castle, 2011). In support of our explanation, previous studies found that healthy individuals high in introvertive anhedonia exhibited an extreme bias toward elemental, instead of configural, processing of information conjunctions (Haddon et al, 2011(Haddon et al, , 2014.…”

“…Specifically, happy expression processing depends more on configural information (the relations among facial features), whereas sad expression processing relies on featural information (the circumscribed face components such as the mouth) to a greater extent. On the other hand, previous studies have demonstrated that introvertive anhedonia, which reflects traits such as a lack of enjoyment from social pleasure and the avoidance of social intimacy (Mason & Claridge, 2006), may reflect a bias toward featural, as opposed to configural, approach to stimulus processing (Haddon et al., 2011, 2014). However, the possibility of perceptual deficits of emotional facial expression processing in social anhedonia has not yet been directly assessed.…”

Disrupted attentional learning in high schizotypy: Evidence of aberrant salience

“…Turning to schizotypy, some studies in healthy participants have provided evidence for a relationship between aberrant salience and the positive dimension of schizotypy (Evans et al ., ; Gray, Fernandez, Williams, Ruddle, & Snowden, ; Lipp, Siddle, & Arnold, ), while others (like the current experiments) have found a relationship with the negative dimension (Haddon et al ., , ; Haselgrove & Evans, ; Moran et al ., ), and Le Pelley, Schmidt‐Hansen et al . () found trend‐level evidence implicating all four O‐LIFE dimensions.…”

Cue competition influences biconditional discrimination

“…We suggest that when stimuli of mismatched salience were presented in compound, the high salience stimulus is over-represented, impairing acquisition. Although there has been considerable exploration of the factors that influence configural learning, including stimulus properties and training (for review, see Melchers, Shanks, & Lachnit, 2008) and individual differences (Byrom & Murphy, 2014, 2016Haddon et al, 2014), the influence of relative stimulus salience has received less attention. This is curious, as beyond the laboratory, the stimulus configurations routinely encountered do not consist of equally associable components.…”