STUDY OF SOCIAL AND COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHIZOPHRENICS

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The program consists of a series of interconnected experiments, carried out on the same subjects, that examine the nature of four frequently cited psychological abnormalities in schizophrenia: (I) an inability to focus attention on task relevant to aspects of the environment (II) anomalies in smooth pursuit eye movements (III) predictability of the forthcoming event and (IV) severe social dysfunctions as manifested by tendencies toward social withdrawal and cognitive disruption when dealing with social phenomena. Initial analyses suggest significant differences between schizophrenics and normals in the nature and time course of interference, interference being more pronounced in schizophrenics than in normals. Recently completed analyses of a preliminary experiment indicate that normal, but not schizophrenic, subjects perform better under social than non-social feedback conditions, while schizophrenic subjects seem more prone to cognitive disruption by negative social feedback than are normals. In developing structural equation models of eye tracking, the best model contains four factors: 1) failure to control saccade 2) smooth pursuit failure, 3) prediction error, and 4) amplitude error. These four factors are moderately intercorrelated, but each is significantly and independently associated of schizophrenia.