Institute of Cognitive Psychology, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal.
J Abnorm Psychol. 2013 Feb;122(1):223-30. doi: 10.1037/a0029884. Epub 2012 Sep 17.
When people are shown a moving object that suddenly disappears and are instructed to locate its vanishing position, systematic errors in the direction of motion and in the direction of gravity are usually observed. Entitled, respectively, Representational Momentum (RepMo) and Representational Gravity, these phenomena seem to be influenced by low-level perceptual mechanisms and high-level cognitive aspects alike. Although being widely acknowledged that schizophrenic patients reveal several deficits in the perception and processing of motion, no study to date has explored these behavioral spatial mislocalizations of smoothly moving targets. The present study reports two experiments intending to fill this gap. The outcomes systematically disclosed a null effect of target's velocity for schizophrenic patients, a well established determinant of RepMo's magnitude with nonpsychiatric populations. No other variables (implied mass and motion direction) revealed this dissociation between the groups. The results are discussed within the distinction of kinematic and dynamic variables, with schizophrenic patients revealing a deficit in the processing of the former, and a link with dysfunctional smooth pursuit eye movements is suggested.
当人们看到一个移动的物体突然消失，并被指示找到其消失的位置时，通常会观察到运动方向和重力方向的系统误差。这两个现象分别被称为代表性动量（RepMo）和代表性重力，它们似乎受到低水平感知机制和高水平认知因素的影响。尽管人们普遍承认精神分裂症患者在运动的感知和处理方面存在多种缺陷，但迄今为止尚无研究探索过平滑移动目标的这些行为空间定位错误。本研究报告了两项旨在填补这一空白的实验。结果系统地揭示了精神分裂症患者的目标速度对 RepMo 幅度的零效应，这是对非精神科人群 RepMo 幅度的一个重要决定因素。没有其他变量（隐含质量和运动方向）在组间产生这种差异。结果在运动学和动力学变量的区别内进行了讨论，精神分裂症患者在处理前者时存在缺陷，并提出了与功能失调的平滑追踪眼球运动相关的假设。
