INVESTIGATING THOUGHT-DISORDER IN SCHIZOPHRENIA WITH THE LEXICAL DECISION TASK

Prior work has found evidence of hyperpriming in schizophrenics, which has been related to a persistence of associational activation in thou ght disorder. We extended this work by administering a lateralized ver sion of the lexical decision task to 10 thought-disordered schizophren ics (TD), 10 non-thought-disordered schizophrenics (NTD), and 11 contr ol subjects to localize the patterns of priming. All subjects were rig ht-handed males. Associated, unassociated, and neutral prime-target pa irs were displayed across seven stimulus location combinations: prime and target both presented to the center, left visual field (LVF), or r ight visual field (RVF); prime presented to the center with target pre sented to the LVF or RVF; and prime and target presented contralateral ly. TD schizophrenics exhibited priming effects comparable to those of the other subject groups, suggesting intact semantic memory structure s and memory processes that may be unimpaired under the conditions stu died. It is believed that the associative process mediating priming ef fects found in schizophrenia are later in the sequence than those exam ined in this study.