ATTENTION DEFICITS IN CHILDHOOD-ONSET SCHIZOPHRENIA - REACTION-TIME STUDIES

The hypothesis of continuity between childhood-onset and adult schizop hrenia was tested by comparing the performance of 15 patients with chi ldhood-onset schizophrenia and 52 age-matched controls on 2 reaction t ime paradigms that have been used to study adult schizophrenia. On sim ple reaction time to tones with regular and irregular preparatory inte rvals of 2, 4, and 8 s, patients showed greater effects of the length of the preparatory interval in the regular condition and greater effec ts of the preparatory interval (girls only) and the preceding preparat ory interval in the irregular series. On simple reaction time to rando m lights and tones, patients were faster on ipsimodal sequences than c ross-modal sequences compared with controls. Overall, patients were mu ch slower than controls in both paradigms. The results suggest similar attention dysfunction as is found in adult schizophrenia and thus are consistent with the continuity hypothesis.