Evidence of reduced selective attention in schizotypal personality disorder

Abstract

It has been shown that high-schizotypy and schizophrenic participants demonstrate increased task-switching costs, although high-schizotypy participants present this pattern only in incongruent trials (Cimino & Haywood, 2008). In this study, we aim to explore whether this results from difficulties in selective attention or task control. A total of 18 participants with high levels of psychometrically defined schizotypy and 16 participants with low scores were tested in two different versions of a task-switching paradigm. Participants were asked to switch between attending to the color or the shape of bidimensional objects following a previous cue. Two versions of the task were investigated, one involving only switches in the perceptual dimension to attend (color or shape) and another also switching the response set. High-schizotypy subjects consistently showed increased switch costs in incongruent trials for both versions of the tasks, demonstrating a deficit in the selection of the perceptual dimension instead of the selection of the response rules.

Keywords:

• Task switching
• Schizotypy
• Selective attention
• Executive function
• Attention

Acknowledgments

This research was carried out using the research facilities at the School of Psychology, Bangor University, Bangor, as part of a undergraduate project by Jenniffer Horrigan under the supervision of Paloma Marí-Beffa. We wish to thank Jennifer Horrigan for her help collecting the data for this study. We are also grateful to the reviewers for their helpful comments.

Notes

¹Note that our high-schizotypy group showed scores comparable to those observed in schizophrenia (36.2; Rossi & Daneluzzo, 2002).