Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Compare pattern of exploratory eye movements during visual scanning of the Rorschach and TAT test cards in people with schizophrenia and controls. METHOD: 10 participants with schizophrenia and 10 controls matched by age, schooling and intellectual level participated in the study. Severity of symptoms was evaluated with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. Test cards were divided into three groups: TAT cards with scenes content, TAT cards with interaction content (TAT-faces), and Rorschach cards with abstract images. Eye movements were analyzed for: total number, duration and location of fixation; and length of saccadic movements. RESULTS: Different pattern of eye movement was found, with schizophrenia participants showing lower number of fixations but longer fixation duration in Rorschach cards and TAT-faces. The biggest difference was observed in Rorschach, followed by TAT-faces and TAT-scene cards. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest alteration in visual exploration mechanisms possibly related to integration of abstract visual information.
Highlights
People with schizophrenia suffer from cognitive impairment related to memory, attention, and cognitive functioning1 with impact on different activities2
The results indicated that the total number of fixations and the number of fixations in the areas of interest were lower albeit their duration was longer among patients with schizophrenia
The visual scanning pattern of the three groups of cards was analyzed by means of MANOVA for Number of Fixations (NF), Mean Duration of Fixations (MDF) e MLS
Summary
People with schizophrenia suffer from cognitive impairment related to memory, attention, and cognitive functioning with impact on different activities. Studies aim to identify physiological and cognitive dysfunction which are present before and during the onset of the disease to enable a creation of new instruments and procedures for differential diagnosis. The analysis of the eye movement pattern is one of the researched procedures that showed a possibility to distinguish, with 89.0% sensitivity, patients with schizophrenia from those with other psychiatric diseases and from healthy subjects. The basic properties of eye movements studied in schizophrenia are fixations and saccadic movements. Fixation occurs when the eyes stop for a brief time period (200-300 ms) enabling the visualized image to be focused and processed in different encephalic regions. Rapid eye movements between two fixations are known as saccadic and their length depends on the characteristics of the stimulus observed, among other factors
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