Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T05:39:38.476Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Contextual Effects on Choice Reaction Time and Accuracy in Acute and Chronic Schizophrenics Impairment in Selective Attention or in the Influence of Prior Learning?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Steven H. Jones ,
David R. Hemsley  and
Jeffrey A. Gray
Steven H. Jones*
Affiliation:
Department of Clinical Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry
David R. Hemsley
Affiliation:
Department of Clinical Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry
Jeffrey A. Gray
Affiliation:
Department of Research and Clinical Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry
*
∗Department of Clinical Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill, London SE5 8AF
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Two hypotheses were tested concerning the nature of the cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia: (a) that there is a broadening of selective attention; and (b) that there is an impairment in associational learning. RDC-diagnosed acute and chronic schizophrenics and normal controls carried out a choice reaction time (RT) task in which conflict between the correct response to a target (a letter in the centre of a computer screen) and that cued by simultaneously presented flankers (two letters either side of the target) increased RT. For 80 (‘valid’) trials, flankers and targets were consistent in the response cued (pressing a button with either left or right hand); on 8 (‘invalid’) trials they conflicted. On invalid trials there was a slowing of RT, and an increase of errors for left-hand responses. Chronic schizophrenics showed the same reactions to cue validity as normal controls, both groups differing significantly from acute schizophrenics. For the latter, the RT data supported hypothesis (b), but the error rates appeared to support hypothesis (a).

Type
Papers
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 159 , Issue 3 , September 1991 , pp. 415 - 421
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anscombe, R. (1987) The disorder of conciousness in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 13, 241—260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, N., Adler, L. E., Franks, R. D., et al (1987) Neurophysiological assessment of sensory gating in psychiatric inpatients: comparison between schizophrenia and other diagnoses. Biological Psychiatry, 22, 603—617.Google Scholar
Baruch, I., Hemsley, D. R. & Gray, J. A. (1988) Differential performance of acute and chronic schizophrenics on a latent inhibition task. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 176, 598—606.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bashore, T. R. (1981) Vocal and manual reaction time estimates of interhemispheric transmission time. Psychological Bulletin, 89, 352—368.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beaumont, J. G. & Dimond, S. (1973) Brain disconnection and schizophrenia. British Journal of Psychiatry, 123, 661—662.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bracha, H. S. (1987) Asymmetric rotational (circling) behaviour, a dopamine-related asymmetry: preliminary findings in unmedicated and never-medicated schizophrenic patients. Biological Psychiatry, 22, 995—1002.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bracha, H. S. (1989) Is there aright hemi-hyper-dopaminergic psychosis? Schizophrenia Research, 2, 317—324.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brennan, H. J. & Hemsley, D. R. (1984) Illusory correlations in paranoid and nonparanoid schizophrenia. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 23, 225—226.Google Scholar
Callaway, E. & Naghdi, S. (1982) Information processing model for schizophrenia. Archives of General Psychiatry, 39, 339—347.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cegalis, J. A. & Tegtmyer, P. F. (1980) Visual selectivity in schizophrenia. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 168, 229—235.Google Scholar
Chapman, L. J. & Chapman, J. P. (1973) Disordered Thought in Schizophrenia. New York: Appleton—Century—Crofts.Google Scholar
Crow, T. J. (1980) Part 2: Positive and negative schizophrenic symptoms and the role of dopamine. British Journal of Psychiatry, 137, 383—388.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, J. M. (1976) Comparative doses and costs of antipsychotic medication. Archives of General Psychiatry, 33, 858—861.Google Scholar
Early, T., Reiman, E. M., Raichle, M. E., et al (1986) Left globus pallidus abnormality in never medicated patients with schizophrenia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 84, 561—562.Google Scholar
Early, T., Posner, M. I., Reiman, E. M., et al (1989) Hyperactivity of the left striato-pallidal projection. Part I: Lower level theory. Psychiatric Developments, 2, 85—108.Google Scholar
Eriksen, B. A. & Eriksen, C. W. (1974) Effects of noise letters upon the identification of a target letter in a nonsearch task. Perception and Psychophysics, 16, 143—149.Google Scholar
Flor-Henry, P. (1976) Epilepsy and psychopathology. In Recent Advances in Clinical Psychiatry (ed. Granville-Grossman, K.), pp. 262–295. Edinburgh, London: Churchill-Livingstone.Google Scholar
Flor-Henry, P. (1983) Hemisyndrome of temporal lobe epilepsy. In Hemisyndromes (ed. Myslobodsky, M. S.), pp. 149–174. Orlando: Academic Press.Google Scholar
George, L. & Neufeld, R. W. J. (1985) Cognition and symptomatology in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 11, 264—285.Google Scholar
Gray, J. A., Feldon, J., Rawlins, J. N. P., et al (1991a) The neuropsychology of schizophrenia. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 14, 1—56.Google Scholar
Gray, J. A., Hemsley, D. R., Gray, N. S., et al (1991b) Schiz bits: misses, mysteries and hits. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 14, 56—84.Google Scholar
Gruzelier, J., Seymour, K., Wilson, L., et al (1988) Impairments on neuropsychological tests of temporohippocampal and frontohippocampal functions and word fluency in remitting schizophrenia and affective disorders. Archives of General Psychiatry, 45, 623—629.Google Scholar
Hemsley, D. R. (1987) An experimental psychological model for schizophrenia. In Search for the Causes of Schizophrenia (eds Hafner, H., Gattaz, W. F. & Janzarik, W.), pp. 179–188. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Jakes, S. & Hemsley, D. R. (1986) Individual differences in reaction to brief exposure to unpatterned visual stimulation. Personality and Individual Differences, 7, 121—123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, S. H. (1989) The Kamin Blocking Effect, Incidental Learning and Choice Reaction Time in Acute and Chronic Schizophrenia. PhD thesis, University of London.Google Scholar
Jones, S. H., Gray, J. A. & Hemsley, D. R. (1990) The Kamin blocking effect, incidental learning and psychoticism. British Journal of Psychology, 81, 95—110.Google Scholar
McGhie, A. & Chapman, J. (1961) Disorders of attention and perception in early schizophrenia. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 34, 103—116.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miller, J. (1987) Priming is not necessary for selective-attention failures: semantic effects of unattended, unprimed letters. Perception and Psychophysics, 41, 419—434.Google Scholar
Neuchterlein, K. H. & Dawson, M. E. (1984) Information processing and attentional functioning in the developmental course of schizophrenic disorders. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 10, 160—203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Overall, J. E. & Gorham, D. R. (1962) The Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale. Psychological Reports, 10, 799—812.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Posner, M. I., Walker, J. A., Friedrich, F. J., et al (1984) Effects of parietal lobe injury on covert orienting of visual attention. Journal of Neuroscience, 4, 1863—1874.Google Scholar
Posner, M. I., Early, T. S., Reiman, E., et al (1988) Asymmetries in hemispheric control of attention in schizophrenia. Archives of General Psychiatry, 45, 814—821.Google Scholar
Raven, J. G. (1977) The Mill Hill Vocabulary Scale. London: H. K. Lewis.Google Scholar
Reynolds, G. P. (1983) Increased concentrations and lateral asymmetry of amygdala dopamine in schizophrenia. Nature, 305, 527—529.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rund, B. R. (1988) Cognitive disturbances in schizophrenics: What are they and what is their origin? Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 77, 113—123.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
SAS Institute Inc. (1985) SAS User's Guide: Statistics, Version 5. Cary, NC: SAS Institute Inc.Google Scholar
Schwartz-Place, E. J. & Gilmore, G. C. (1980) Perceptual organisation in schizophrenia. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 89, 409—418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slater, E., Beard, A. W. & Glithero, E. (1963) The schizophrenialike psychoses of epilepsy. British Journal of Psychiatry, 109, 95—150.Google Scholar
Spitzer, R. L., Endicott, J. & Robbins, E. (1978) Research Diagnostic Criteria (RDC) for a Selected Group of Functional Disorders (3rd edn). New York: State Psychiatric Institute.Google Scholar
Swerdlow, N. R. & Koob, G. F. (1987) Dopamine, schizophrenia, mania and depression: toward a unified hypothesis of cortico-striato-pallido-thalamic function. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 10, 197—245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tukey, J. W. (1949) Comparing individual means in the analysis of variance. Biometrics, 5, 99—114.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.