Very few studies have examined physical and social anhedonia across the spectrum of schizophrenia. In the present study, we recruited three groups of participants (n=84 in each group): patients with schizophrenia, schizotypy and non-schizotypy as assessed by the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ). All participants completed the self-reported trait anhedonia scales (the Revised Physical...

The study investigated the effects of perceptual load on the bias to report seeing non-existing events—a bias associated with positive symptoms of schizophrenia and positive schizotypal symptoms. Undergraduate students completed psychometric measures of schizotypy and were asked to detect fast moving words among non-words under different levels of perceptual load. Perceptual load was manipulate...

The Wisconsin Schizotypy Scales (WSS) are widely used for assessing schizotypy. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) indicates that a two-factor structure, positive and negative schizotypy, underlies these scales. Recently developed 15-item short forms of the WSS demonstrated good reliability and validity. This study examined the factor structure underlying the short-form WSS. Consistent with the...

The present study extended recent work examining the factor structure underlying the Wisconsin Schizotypy Scales by examining the factor invariance of this structure in Spanish and American nonclinical samples of young adults. A series of confirmatory factor analyses were conducted with 547 Spanish and 2,171 American young adults. Consistent with prior work, the best fitting model in both sampl...

Positive schizotypal traits have been associated with right hemisphere activation. Previous research has indicated that the left and right hemispheres differ in their processing of semantic ambiguity; specifically, given sufficient time, the left hemisphere primes dominant meanings and inhibits subordinate meanings, and the right hemisphere primes both dominant and subordinate meanings. The aut...

Previous single studies have found inconsistent results on sex differences in positive schizotypy, women scoring mainly higher than men, whereas in negative schizotypy studies have often found that men score higher than women. However, information on the overall effect is unknown. In this study, meta-analytic methods were used to estimate sex differences in Wisconsin Schizotypy Scales developed...

INTRODUCTION Previous studies of the relation between theory of mind (ToM) and schizotypy have suggested that ToM deficits may be associated with positive signs (e.g., hallucination- and delusion-like experiences). Good theoretical reasons exist to suggest that this relation may be largely due to ToM deficits being predominantly associated with the occurrence of persecutory delusion-like belief...

Schizotypy phenotypes in the general population share etiopathogenic mechanisms and risk factors with schizophrenia, supporting the notion of psychosis as a continuum ranging from nonclinical to clinical deviance. Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) is a candidate susceptibility gene for schizophrenia that is involved in the regulation of dopamine in the prefrontal cortex. Several recent studie...

It was examined whether psychotic-like personality traits in a sample of 205 college students could predict logical reasoning deficits, akin to those seen in schizophrenia. The participants were tested on their ability to assess the logical validity of premises (Logical Reasoning Task), and completed a multi-dimensional schizotypy inventory (O-LIFE). Low accuracy was associated with increased l...