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The bias toward intentionality in schizophrenia: Automaticity, context, and relationships to symptoms and functioning.

ABSTRACT: Previous research on attributions in schizophrenia has focused on whether individuals make hostile, intentional attributions for ambiguous negative events. It is unclear, however, whether individuals with schizophrenia differ from controls in their general judgments of intentionality judgments in nonconflict and emotionally neutral situations. Research in social psychology suggests that nonclinical individuals present with an automatic bias to see intentionality and that this bias is regulated by the operation of controlled processes. The present study examined whether this general intentionality bias distinguishes individuals with schizophrenia (n = 213) from nonpatient controls (n = 151). Indeed, individuals with schizophrenia were more likely to attribute intentional motives to others' actions relative to controls. This intentionality bias was related to hostility, role functioning, and independent living skills. These findings may provide one domain to examine in future approaches to social cognition in schizophrenia. (PsycINFO Database Record

SUBMITTER: Buck B

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6051707 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The bias toward intentionality in schizophrenia: Automaticity, context, and relationships to symptoms and functioning.

Buck Benjamin B Hester Neil R NR Pinkham Amy A Harvey Philip D PD Jarskog L Fredrik LF Penn David L DL

Journal of abnormal psychology 20180701 5

Previous research on attributions in schizophrenia has focused on whether individuals make hostile, intentional attributions for ambiguous negative events. It is unclear, however, whether individuals with schizophrenia differ from controls in their general judgments of intentionality judgments in nonconflict and emotionally neutral situations. Research in social psychology suggests that nonclinical individuals present with an automatic bias to see intentionality and that this bias is regulated b ...[more]

PMID: 30010368

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Project description:BackgroundReinforcement learning has been proposed to contribute to the development of amotivation in individuals with schizophrenia (SZ). Accumulating evidence suggests dysfunctional learning in individuals with SZ in Go/NoGo learning and expected value representation. However, previous findings might have been confounded by the effects of antipsychotic exposure. Moreover, reinforcement learning also rely on the learning context. Few studies have examined the learning performance in reward and loss-avoidance context separately in medication-naïve individuals with first-episode SZ. This study aimed to explore the behaviour profile of reinforcement learning performance in medication-naïve individuals with first-episode SZ, including the contextual performance, the Go/NoGo learning and the expected value representation performance.MethodsTwenty-nine medication-naïve individuals with first-episode SZ and 40 healthy controls (HCs) who have no significant difference in age and gender, completed the Gain and Loss Avoidance Task, a reinforcement learning task involving stimulus pairs presented in both the reward and loss-avoidance context. We assessed the group difference in accuracy in the reward and loss-avoidance context, the Go/NoGo learning and the expected value representation. The correlations between learning performance and the negative symptom severity were examined.ResultsIndividuals with SZ showed significantly lower accuracy when learning under the reward than the loss-avoidance context as compared to HCs. The accuracies under the reward context (90%win- 10%win) in the Acquisition phase was significantly and negatively correlated with the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS) avolition scores in individuals with SZ. On the other hand, individuals with SZ showed spared ability of Go/NoGo learning and expected value representation.ConclusionsDespite our small sample size and relatively modest findings, our results suggest possible reduced learning bias towards reward context among medication-naïve individuals with first-episode SZ. The reward learning performance was correlated with amotivation symptoms. This finding may facilitate our understanding of the underlying mechanism of negative symptoms. Reinforcement learning performance under the reward context may be important to better predict and prevent the development of schizophrenia patients' negative symptom, especially amotivation.

Project description:Anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders are common childhood psychiatric disorders. Behavioral inhibition (BI) is a widely studied risk factor for anxiety. Less is known about overcontrol, a related behavioral phenotype characterized by concern for errors, perfectionism, and inflexibility and also associated with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Both BI and overcontrol show associations with aberrant cognitive control and neural error responding (via the error-related negativity; ERN) yet it is unknown whether each imparts differential risk. Understanding whether overcontrol demonstrates independent associations from BI with cognitive functioning, neural error monitoring, and childhood anxiety and obsessive-compulsive presentations could aid in identifying a novel mechanistic treatment target. We assessed BI, overcontrol, cognitive functioning and psychopathology in a cross-sectional sample of 5-6 year old children (N = 126). Children completed an electroencephalogram (EEG) to assess the ERN. Overcontrol was associated with worse cognitive shifting, worse inhibitory control and higher anxiety and obsessive-compulsive symptoms, beyond BI. BI was associated with worse cognitive shifting, better inhibitory control and higher anxiety symptoms, beyond overcontrol. When assessed simultaneously, only overcontrol demonstrated a significant relationship with a blunted ERN. Moreover, overcontrol mediated (cross-sectionally) the well-established relationship between ERN and anxiety and obsessive-compulsive symptoms. BI and overcontrol impart differential risk for child cognitive functioning and anxiety while overcontrol demonstrates additional risk for aberrant neural error monitoring, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive presentations. Overcontrol may also be a mechanistic pathway between the ERN and transdiagnostic anxiety and obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Overcontrol may be a target warranted for early-childhood intervention in anxiety and OCD.

Dataset Information

The bias toward intentionality in schizophrenia: Automaticity, context, and relationships to symptoms and functioning.

Publications

The bias toward intentionality in schizophrenia: Automaticity, context, and relationships to symptoms and functioning.

Similar Datasets

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