Abstract

The term schizotypy refers to a group of stable personality traits with attributes similar to symptoms of schizophrenia, usually classified in terms of positive, negative or cognitive disorganization symptoms. The observation of increased spreading of semantic activation in individuals with schizotypal traits has led to the hypothesis that thought disorder, one of the characteristics of cognitive disorganization, stems from semantic disturbances. Nevertheless, it is still not clear under which specific circumstances (i.e., automatic or controlled processing, direct or indirect semantic relation) schizotypy affects semantic priming or whether it does affect it at all. We conducted two semantic priming studies with volunteers varying in schizotypy, one with directly related prime-target pairs and another with indirectly related pairs. Our participants completed a lexical decision task with related and unrelated pairs presented at short (250 ms) and long (750 ms) stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). Then, they responded to the brief versions of the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire and the Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences, both of which include measures of cognitive disorganization. Bayesian mixed-effects models indicated expected effects of SOA and semantic relatedness, as well as an interaction between relatedness and directness (greater priming effects for directly related pairs). Even though our analyses demonstrated good sensitivity, we observed no influence of cognitive disorganization over semantic priming. Our study provides no compelling evidence that schizotypal symptoms, specifically those associated with the cognitive disorganization dimension, are rooted in an increased spreading of semantic activation in priming tasks.

Highlights

  • In the influential model proposed by Meehl (1962), schizotypy refers to a personality organization which stems from a pattern of brain functioning that can lead to the development of schizophrenia, given interactions with differences in genetic or socialHow to cite this article Rodríguez-Ferreiro J, Aguilera M, Davies R. 2020

  • We present an investigation comprising two studies designed to clarify the scope of semantic priming, as a marker of enhanced semantic activation, given differences in schizotypal personality traits

  • Can we examine how semantic processing varies among individuals varying in schizotypy? Our approach is to consider the impact of interactions between the effects of semantic prime-target relatedness, or the directness of relatedness, and the effect of variation in schizotypal dimension

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Summary

Introduction

In the influential model proposed by Meehl (1962), schizotypy refers to a personality organization which stems from a pattern of brain functioning that can lead to the development of schizophrenia, given interactions with differences in genetic or socialHow to cite this article Rodríguez-Ferreiro J, Aguilera M, Davies R. 2020. Thought disorder (cognitive slippage or associative loosening) is one of the fundamental symptoms of schizotypy (Meehl, 1962) This characteristic, referred to as formal thought disorder (as opposed to disorders of thought content, such as delusions), has been proposed to stem from atypical patterns of semantic activation (Spitzer, 1997). This hypothesis is based on findings obtained with a range of experimental tasks employed to assess semantic processing, originally, in the study of schizophrenia patients (for a review, see Doughty & Done, 2009)

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