Department of Psychiatry, Yonsei University College of Medicine Gangnam Severance Hospital, 211 Eonjuro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 135-720, Korea.
Behav Brain Funct. 2014 Apr 16;10:13. doi: 10.1186/1744-9081-10-13.
Effective integration of visual information is necessary to utilize abstract thinking, but patients with schizophrenia have slow eye movement and usually explore limited visual information. This study examines the relationship between abstract thinking ability and the pattern of eye gaze in patients with schizophrenia using a novel theme identification task.
Twenty patients with schizophrenia and 22 healthy controls completed the theme identification task, in which subjects selected which word, out of a set of provided words, best described the theme of a picture. Eye gaze while performing the task was recorded by the eye tracker.
Patients exhibited a significantly lower correct rate for theme identification and lesser fixation and saccade counts than controls. The correct rate was significantly correlated with the fixation count in patients, but not in controls.
Patients with schizophrenia showed impaired abstract thinking and decreased quality of gaze, which were positively associated with each other. Theme identification and eye gaze appear to be useful as tools for the objective measurement of abstract thinking in patients with schizophrenia.
有效整合视觉信息对于利用抽象思维是必要的，但精神分裂症患者的眼动缓慢，通常只能探索有限的视觉信息。本研究使用一种新颖的主题识别任务，考察了精神分裂症患者的抽象思维能力与眼动模式之间的关系。
20 名精神分裂症患者和 22 名健康对照者完成了主题识别任务，要求受试者从一组提供的单词中选择哪个单词最能描述图片的主题。任务执行过程中的眼动由眼动仪记录。
患者的主题识别正确率明显低于对照组，注视和扫视次数也明显少于对照组。在患者中，正确率与注视次数呈显著正相关，但在对照组中则无相关性。
精神分裂症患者表现出抽象思维能力受损和注视质量下降，两者呈正相关。主题识别和眼动似乎可以作为客观测量精神分裂症患者抽象思维的有用工具。
