EYE-TRACKING DYSFUNCTION IN OFFSPRING FROM THE NEW-YORK HIGH-RISK PROJECT - DIAGNOSTIC SPECIFICITY AND THE ROLE OF ATTENTION

Eye tracking abnormalities were studied in the offspring of schizophre nic, unipolar depressed and bipolar probands from the New York High-Ri sk Project to examine their familial specificity. Offspring of schizop hrenic and depressed probands both had significant global performance deficits based on spectral purity measurements, but only the offspring of schizophrenic probands had an increased rate of intrusive anticipa tory saccades. The greater specificity bf high anticipatory saccade ra te than global performance impairment suggests that this eye movement abnormality may provide a more specific biological marker of-risk for schizophrenia than the global measure of eye tracking performance used in this study. Attention facilitation effectively normalized all perf ormance deficits in the offspring of schizophrenic patients, suggestin g that a problem sustaining focused visual attention may contribute to eye tracking deficits observed in the relatives of schizophrenic prob ands. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd.