Panton Kirsten R, Badcock Johanna C, Dickinson J Edwin, Badcock David R
Human Vision Laboratory, School of Psychological Science, University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, Australia.
Division of Psychiatry, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, Centre for Clinical Research in Neuropsychiatry, University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, Australia.
Front Psychiatry. 2018 Oct 24;9:518. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00518. eCollection 2018.
Contour integration is impaired in schizophrenia patients, even at the first episode, but little is known about visual integration abilities prior to illness onset. To examine this issue, we compared undergraduate students high and low in schizotypal personality traits, reflecting putative liability to psychosis, on two psychophysical tasks assessing local and global stages of the integration process. The Radial Frequency Jittered Orientation Tolerance (RFJOT) task measures tolerance to orientation noise at the local signal level, when judging global stimulus orientation, whilst the Radial Frequency Integration Task (RFIT) measures the ability to globally integrate the local signals that have been extracted during shape discrimination. Positive schizotypy was assessed with the Perceptual Aberration (PAb) scale from the Wisconsin Schizotypy Scales-Brief. On the RFJOT task, the High PAb group ( = 55) tolerated statistically significantly less noise ( = -0.494) and had a lower proportion of correct responses ( = -0.461) than the Low PAb group ( = 77). For the RFIT there was no statistically significant difference in integration abilities between the High and Low PAb groups. High and Low PAb groups also differed on other positive and disorganized (but not negative) schizotypy traits, hence poorer performance on the RFJOT may not be solely related to unusual perceptual experiences. These findings suggest that difficulties with local noise tolerance but not global integration occur in healthy young adults with high levels of schizotypal personality traits, and may be worth investigating as a marker of risk for schizophrenia.
轮廓整合在精神分裂症患者中受损，即使在首次发作时也是如此，但对于疾病发作前的视觉整合能力知之甚少。为了研究这个问题，我们比较了具有分裂型人格特质（反映假定的精神病易感性）高低的本科生在两项评估整合过程局部和全局阶段的心理物理学任务上的表现。径向频率抖动方向耐受性（RFJOT）任务在判断全局刺激方向时测量在局部信号水平对方向噪声的耐受性，而径向频率整合任务（RFIT）测量在形状辨别过程中提取的局部信号进行全局整合的能力。使用威斯康星分裂型量表简版中的感知偏差（PAb）量表评估阳性分裂型特质。在RFJOT任务中，高PAb组（n = 55）比低PAb组（n = 77）在统计学上显著耐受更少的噪声（M = -0.494）且正确反应比例更低（M = -0.461）。对于RFIT，高PAb组和低PAb组在整合能力上没有统计学上的显著差异。高PAb组和低PAb组在其他阳性和紊乱（但不是阴性）分裂型特质上也存在差异，因此在RFJOT上较差的表现可能不仅仅与异常的感知体验有关。这些发现表明，具有高水平分裂型人格特质的健康年轻成年人存在局部噪声耐受性困难但不存在全局整合困难，这可能值得作为精神分裂症风险标志物进行研究。
