Executive/attentional performance and measures of schizotypy in patients with schizophrenia and in their nonpsychotic first-degree relatives

Previous studies of executive/attentional functions have found impairments in nonpsychotic first-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia. The aims of this study were. (1) to replicate these findings by three laboratory measures of attention/information processing - a continuous performance test (DS-CPT), a forced-choice span of apprehension task (SPAN), and a digit symbol substitution test (DSST), and by a series of neuropsychological tests sensitive to prefrontal cortical damage - Trail Making A and B, verbal fluency (VFT), Stroop Color and Word Test (Stroop), and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST); (2) to investigate whether such executive/attentional deficits are associated with schizotypal traits assessed using the social anhedonia, physical anhedortia. perceptual aberration and magical ideation scales (Chapman, L.J., Chapman, J.P., Raulin, M.L. 1976. Scales for physical and social anhedonia. J. Abnorm. Psychol. 85, 374-382; Chapman, L.J., Chapman, J.P., Raulin, IM.L., 1978. Body-image aberration in schizophrenia. J. Abnorm. Psychol. 87, 399-407; Eckblad, M., Chapman, L.J., 1983. Magical ideation as an indicator of schizotypy. J. Consult. Clin. Psychol. 51, 215-225). In both patient and relative groups, performance was significantly poorer on the DSST, VFT and Trail B, and the reaction time on the SPAN was significantly longer. These neuropsychological impairments were present as much in siblings as in parents of schizophrenic patients: age did not appear to cancel differences between the relative and control groups. In the relative group, the four scores of schizotypy were at an intermediate level between those of patient and control groups, and the social anhedonia and perceptual aberration scores tended to be significantly different between the relative and the control groups. Only two significant correlations were found between the neuropsychological performance and the measures of schizotypy. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.