CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HYPOTHETICALLY PSYCHOSISPRONE COLLEGE-STUDENTS

The study of individuals at the boundaries of schizophrenia has histor ically involved genetic relatives of schizophrenia patients or individ uals who meet criteria for schizotypal personality disorder (SPD). Rec ently, many investigators have turned to the use of psychometric scale s, developed to measure psychotic traits or vulnerability to developin g schizophrenia, to screen large populations of college students in or der to identify individuals who are ''psychosis prone'' or ''schizotyp al'', To help answer the question of whether students identified with psychometric scales are indeed psychosis prone, we screened 1115 colle ge students with the Perceptual Aberration/ Magical Ideation (PerMag) and Physical Anhedonia (PhysAn) Scales. Individuals who scored 2 stand ard deviations (SD) above the mean on the scales were selected as expe rimental subjects (N=13 PerMag, N=10 PhysAn) and a subpopulation of ma tched subjects who scored less than 0.5 SD above the mean were selecte d as control subjects (N=24). All subjects then received a full batter y of tests, including structured clinical interviews, the MMPI, and ps ychophysiological measures of information processing, including prepul se inhibition and habituation of the human startle response, visual ba ckward masking and reaction time measures. The results suggest that th e PerMag scale, but not the PhysAn scale, identifies individuals with some psychotic, affective and anxiety symptoms when compared to the co ntrols. Neither scale predicts a diagnosis of schizotypal personality disorder or deficits on measures of information processing that charac terize schizophrenia or schizotypal personality disordered patients. C opyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.