PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGICAL RESPONSIVITY AND BEHAVIOR IN SCHIZOPHRENIA

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There has been some debate as to whether schizophrenia with a pre-pubertal onset is basically the same disorder as the much more common adult-onset schizophrenia. We studied autonomic nervous system activity and reaction time, using paradigms which have consistently produced markers of adult-onset schizophrenia, in a sample of adolescents with early-onset schizophrenia and a control group of normal adolescents. Compared to controls the patients had higher resting autonomic baselines on two of three measures, were autonomically hyporeactive to novel and to meaningful stimuli, and showed disorderly habituation of autonomic responses. The patients showed deficiencies in overall response speed and in attentional, preparatory, and decision processes. Both sets of findings are similar to previous findings from this laboratory and elsewhere on adult-onset cases. Therefore they support the hypothesis of continuity between childhood-onset and adult-onset schizophrenia. Previous studies have shown greatly impaired manual reaction time in schizophrenia, but unimpaired reaction times of saccadic eye movements suggesting that the saccadic task might require only automatic information processing. We tested this by using a saccadic task in which the length and variability of preparatory intervals were systematically varied. If saccadic reaction time is purely automatic it should not be affected by these manipulations. We found, however, that there were equivalent preparatory interval effects in both (adult) schizophrenia patients and controls, and no difference in reaction time. The data suggested that slow manual reaction time may be due to a deficiency in working memory in schizophrenia.