Experience of Pleasure and Emotional Expression in Individuals with Schizotypal Personality Features

Yan-Fang Shi,Simon S Y Lui,Ya Wang,Yu-Na Wang,Ting Xu,Xiao-Yan Cao,Yi Wang,Xiao-Lu Hsi,Eric F C Cheung,Ji-Gang Zong,Vincent W S Tse,Raymond C K Chan,William S Stone,Leonardo Fontenelle

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0034147

Abstract

Difficulties in feeling pleasure and expressing emotions are one of the key features of schizophrenia spectrum conditions, and are significant contributors to constricted interpersonal interactions. The current study examined the experience of pleasure and emotional expression in college students who demonstrated high and low levels of schizotypal personality disorder (SPD) traits on self-report questionnaires. One hundred and seventeen subjects with SPD traits and 116 comparison controls were recruited to participate. Cluster analyses conducted in the SPD group identified negative SPD and positive SPD subgroups. The negative SPD group exhibited deficient emotional expression and anticipatory pleasure, but showed intact consummatory pleasure. The positive SPD group reported significantly greater levels of anticipatory, consummatory and total pleasure compared to the control group. Both SPD groups reported significantly more problems in everyday memory and greater levels of depressive and anxiety-related symptoms.

Highlights

Emotional impairments have been considered to be core features of schizophrenia [1,2]
Post hoc Least Square Differences (LSD) tests showed that the negative schizotypal personality disorder (SPD) and the control groups did not differ significantly on the Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale (TEPS) total score (p = 0.134), or on the consummatory pleasure score (p = 0.568)
Post hoc LSD tests showed that the negative SPD group reported more memory problems than the control group (p,0.001) and positive SPD group (p = 0.003), whereas controls demonstrated fewer problems than the other groups

Summary

Introduction

Emotional impairments have been considered to be core features of schizophrenia [1,2]. Deficits in the ability to experience pleasure in schizophrenia may be divided into anticipatory (feeling of wanting) and consummatory (feeling of liking) dimensions [13]. Based on this framework, individuals with schizophrenia have been shown with intact consummatory pleasure but impaired anticipatory pleasure [13,14,15]. Individuals with schizophrenia have been shown with intact consummatory pleasure but impaired anticipatory pleasure [13,14,15] Most of these studies were limited to patients with schizophrenia. Recent empirical findings from at-risk individuals for psychosis such as schizotypal personality disorder (SPD) traits or schizotypy [16,17,18,19] suggest that deficits in hedonic capacity may even be manifested in a subtle dysfunction even before the development of full-blown psychosis [20,21,22]

Methods

Results

Conclusion