T32. INTACT AUDITORY PERCEPTION IN INDIVIDUALS AT CLINICAL HIGH RISK FOR PSYCHOSIS

Abstract

Basic perceptual processes are impaired in schizophrenia and may explain key social deficits such as the ability to identify emotions in other people. We recently reported widespread auditory impairments across multiple domains of auditory function in individuals with schizophrenia. Additionally, we found that these auditory impairments are associated with auditory emotion recognition deficits in patients with schizophrenia. These auditory deficits may be closely linked to the neural circuits relevant for the development of psychotic symptoms and thus may be useful predictors of psychosis onset and promising therapeutic targets. However, it is not yet known if basic auditory processing deficits are associated with the impaired emotional processing preceding the illness. We have assessed 25 individuals at clinical high-risk for psychosis and 42 healthy controls between the ages of 12 and 30 on a comprehensive battery of tasks spanning the four empirically derived domains of auditory function. We explored group differences across the battery of basic auditory tasks using between groups t-tests. We also explored the relationship between basic auditory processing and auditory emotion identification within the high-risk group using correlational analysis. We did not observe significant group differences in the ability to identify emotion in vocal samples or in basic auditory skills, with the exception of frequency discrimination, which was significantly better in high-risk subjects (Cohen’s =.67, p<.05). Additionally, none of the basic auditory skills correlated with emotion recognition in the high-risk group. Previous research has indicated widespread impairment of basic auditory skills in schizophrenia that is associated with difficulty understanding emotion from the vocal characteristics of a speaker. We investigated whether these impairments and correlations are present in individuals at high-risk for psychosis. We found no indication of impaired emotion recognition or basic auditory skills in high-risk individuals. Our results suggest that auditory impairment is not a characteristic of high-risk status and thus may emerge after psychosis onset.