IMPLICIT LEARNING OF COVARIATION IN SCHIZOPHRENIA

描述精神分裂症患者难以解释面部情绪。这个提议考察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种范式，在这种范式中，人们学习非显着的协变，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知识。首先，受试者将隐式地学习词-情感对与其在视频屏幕上的空间位置之间的共变。由于先前的工作表明精神分裂症患者对言语材料的内隐学习是正常的，因此预计患者在这项任务上会表现正常。第二，面部图片取代了口头材料。因此，受试者会将面部-情绪对与其在视频屏幕上的空间位置之间的协变相关联。由于这项任务不需要患者处理内部面部特征，因此预计患者也将正常执行这项任务。最后，受试者将与内部面部特征和情绪之间的协变。由于学习协变需要感知内部面部特征，因此预计患者将受到损害。如果患者没有表现出正常的学习，这将是第一个示范异常的面孔内隐学习在这一组。如果患者在这种内隐学习任务中表现正常，那么这一发现表明了一个完整的学习协变系统。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.