Title

Comparison of three computer-administered cognitive tasks as putative endophenotypes of schizophrenia

Authors

Authors

J. S. Bedwell; V. Kamath;E. Baksh

Comments

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Abbreviated Journal Title

Schizophr. Res.

Keywords

schizotypal personality questionnaire; Continuous Performance Test; schizophrenia; endophenotypes; schizotypy; CARD-SORTING-TEST; SCHIZOTYPAL PERSONALITY-DISORDER; CONTINUOUS; PERFORMANCE-TEST; FIRST-DEGREE RELATIVES; AGE-RELATED DECLINE; SUSTAINED-ATTENTION; 1ST-DEGREE RELATIVES; NONPSYCHOTIC RELATIVES; COMMUNITY SAMPLES; APPREHENSION TEST; Psychiatry

Abstract

It has been repeatedly demonstrated that individuals with schizotypal personality features (SPF) exhibit similar endophenotypic traits as persons with schizophrenia. Less research has compared the relative sensitivity of different endophenotypes in the same sample of individuals with SPF. Fourteen university students with SPF (mean age 20.5 +/- 1.6; 43% male) and 26 controls (mean age 20.3 +/- 1.1; 31% male) were defined by the Abbreviated Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ-B). All participants reported no known biological relative with schizophrenia. Participants completed three computer-administered cognitive tasks: a 6-min degraded-stimuli A-X Continuous Performance Test (CPT), the Wisconsin Card Sort Test (WCST), and a Span of Apprehension (SOA) task (6- and 12-letter arrays). On the CPT, only omission errors resulted in a statistically significant group difference, U=115.5, p=.05, Cohen's d=0.54 (medium effect size), with the SPF group (mean errors: 3.43 +/- 3.28) making more omission errors than controls (mean errors: 1.88 +/- 2.66). Notably, 46% of the controls had no omission errors, compared to 14% of the SPF group. The only SPQ-B factor score to show a statistically significant linear relationship with CPT omission errors was the Cognitive-Perceptual factor (r(s)=.33, p=.04). Group differences on performance indices from the SOA and WCST did not approach statistical significance. Based on performance from the community-identified schizotypes, results suggest that performance on the CPT may represent a more robust endophenotype of schizophrenia, compared to the SOA and WCST. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Journal Title

Schizophrenia Research

Volume

88

Issue/Number

1-3

Publication Date

1-1-2006

Document Type

Article

Language

English

First Page

36

Last Page

46

WOS Identifier

WOS:000242719900005

ISSN

0920-9964

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