Subjective awareness of everyday dysexecutive behavior precedes ‘objective’ executive problems in schizotypy: A replication and extension study

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the subjective awareness of everyday dysexecutive function and the ‘objective’ executive function in individuals with schizotypal personality features. Forty-nine individuals with schizotypal personality disorder (SPD) proneness (25 negative schizotypy and 24 non-negative schizotypy were identified using cluster analysis) and 44 non-SPD individuals completed a battery of ‘objective’ executive function tests and a self-reported Dysexecutive Questionnaire (DEX) on everyday executive problems. The findings showed that individuals with SPD proneness including negative schizotypy and non-negative schizotypy did not have significant worse performance than non-SPD in most of ‘objective’ executive function tests, but self-reported significantly disproportionate more dysexecutive problems than non-SPD. Furthermore, SPD proneness, especially negative schizotypy was found to give undependable estimation on their everyday dysexecutive function while non-negative schizotypy was not. The current findings suggest that the subjective awareness of dysexecutive function may precede actual ‘objective’ executive function impairments in a subtype of SPD (non-negative schizotypy) and the subjective complaint of the daily dysexecutive behavior in SPD proneness, especially negative schizotypy might result from their unreliable estimation of executive function.