Effects of smoking status and schizotypy on latent inhibition

Two experiments investigated the effects of smoking status and schizotypy o n the ability to gate out irrelevant information as assessed in auditory an d visual latent inhibition (LI), Stroop effect and negative priming. The tw o experiments used 10 or 30 pre-exposures for auditory LI and a long or sho rt interstimulus interval for the Stroop task, respectively, which included negative priming and served as masking task for the visual LI. Smoking sta tus did not affect performance on any of the tasks, except for auditory LI after 30 pre-exposures, which was enhanced. The relationship between schizo typy and cognitive performance was complex. In Experiment 1, high schizotyp als had smaller visual LI and negative priming than low schizotypals, where as in Experiment 2 the reverse was observed, namely, larger LI and negative priming in high schizotypals.