IMPLICIT LEARNING OF COVARIATION IN SCHIZOPHRENIA

精神分裂症患者难以理解面部情绪。这一提议检验了他们内隐学习面部刺激的能力。它使用了Lewicki和他的同事开发的一个范式，在这个范式中，人们学习非显著的协变，或者一起呈现的特征之间的关系，而不需要对这些协变有明确的了解。首先，受试者将隐性地学习单词-情绪对与其在视频屏幕上的空间位置之间的共变。由于先前的研究显示精神分裂症患者对言语材料的内隐学习正常，因此预计患者在这项任务中会表现正常。第二，人脸图片取代了语言材料。因此，受试者会将脸-情绪对与其在视频屏幕上的空间位置之间的共变联系起来。由于这项任务不需要患者处理内部面部特征，因此预计患者在这项任务中也会表现正常。最后，受试者将看到面部内部特征和情绪之间的协变。由于学习共变需要对面部内部特征的感知，预计患者将受到损害。如果患者没有表现出正常的学习，这将是该组中首次出现异常的面部内隐学习。如果患者在这项内隐学习任务中表现正常，那么这一发现就证明了一个完整的协变学习系统。此外，这种训练方法将是一种潜在的治疗手段，用于教导精神分裂症患者如何解释社会线索。

DESCRIPTION Schizophrenia patients have difficulty interpreting facial emotions. This proposal examines their ability to implicitly learn facial stimuli. It uses a paradigm developed by Lewicki and his colleagues in which people learn non-salient covariations, or relations between features that are presented together, without having express knowledge of these co-variations. First, subjects will implicitly learn a co-variation between word-emotion pairs and their spatial location on a video screen. Because prior work shows normal implicit learning of verbal material in schizophrenia it is expected that patients will perform normally on this task. Second, pictures of faces replace verbal material. Thus, subjects will associate a covariation between a face- emotion pair and its spatial location on a video screen. Because this task does not require patients to process internal facial features, it is expected that patients will perform normally on this task as well. Finally, subjects will be presented with a covariation between internal facial features and emotion. Because learning the covariation requires perception of internal facial features, it is expected that the patients will be impaired. If patients do not show normal learning, it will be the first demonstration of abnormal implicit learning of faces in this group. If patients perform normally on this implicit learning tasks, then this finding demonstrates an intact system for learning covariations. Further, this method of training would be a potential therapeutic means for teaching schizophrenia patients how to interpret social cues.