Enhanced semantic priming in thought-disordered schizophrenic patients using a word pronunciation task

Previous research on semantic priming in schizophrenia has produced contrad ictory findings. For the present study, it was intended to resolve some of the ambiguities in the literature. Using a semantic priming task with word pronunciation, evidence is provided that thought-disordered schizophrenic ( TD) patients exhibit significantly increased semantic priming as compared t o healthy and psychiatric controls. Results suggest that enhanced semantic priming is not confined to tasks that require lexical decision. Moreover, r esults indicate that TD schizophrenic patients suffer from a decay of hiera rchical thinking, i.e. TD schizophrenics reveal a tendency to process the l ess meaningful rather than the dominant aspects of external information. Pr iming effects for the inferior meaning of homograph words (for example, 'da nce' is an inferior, and 'game' is a superior associate of the word 'ball') were significantly greater compared to healthy controls and non-TD schizop hrenics. Results were not moderated by sociodemographic background variable s, psychomotor slowing and psychopathological symptoms other than thought d isorder. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.