Attention to irrelevant cues is related to positive symptoms in schizophrenia

Richard Morris, Oren Griffiths, Michael E Le Pelley, Thomas W Weickert, Richard Morris, Oren Griffiths, Michael E Le Pelley, Thomas W Weickert

Abstract

Many modern learning theories assume that the amount of attention to a cue depends on how well that cue predicted important events in the past. Schizophrenia is associated with deficits in attention and recent theories of psychosis have argued that positive symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations are related to a failure of selective attention. However, evidence demonstrating that attention to irrelevant cues is related to positive symptoms in schizophrenia is lacking. We used a novel method of measuring attention to nonpredictive (and thus irrelevant) cues in a causal learning test (Le Pelley ME, McLaren IP. Learned associability and associative change in human causal learning. Q J Exp Psychol B. 2003;56:68-79) to assess whether healthy adults and people with schizophrenia discriminate previously predictive and nonpredictive cues. In a series of experiments with independent samples, we demonstrated: (1) when people with schizophrenia who had severe positive symptoms successfully distinguished between predictive and nonpredictive cues during training, they failed to discriminate between predictive and nonpredictive cues relative to healthy adults during subsequent testing and (2) learning about nonpredictive cues was correlated with more severe positive symptoms scores in schizophrenia. These results suggest that positive symptoms of schizophrenia are related to increased attention to nonpredictive cues during causal learning. This deficit in selective attention results in learning irrelevant causal associations and may be the basis of positive symptoms in schizophrenia.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Mean learning scores of the stage 2 test for each group (A) and each subgroup of learners (B). Error bars show SEM. *Significant between-group difference (P < .05).
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Correlation of Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale positive symptom scores with predictive (A) and nonpredictive cue performance (B); and mean learning scores of the stage 2 test for the high- and low-positive symptom subgroup and the healthy adults (C). Error bars show SEM. **P < .01.

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Source: PubMed

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