Schizotypy and Attention

Schizotypal personality traits are traits that are on a continuum and that are similar as aspects that can be seen in schizophrenia (Steel, Hemsley, and Pickering, 2007). Participants scoring either high or low on traits performed a cued letter-comparison task. The participants were confronted with targed cues consisting of two letters and by pressing "yes" or "no" keys when they were identical or different. The targed stimuli were preceded by different cues. There were three conditions in this task: neutral, expected, and unexpected. Participants were instructed to respond as fast as possible as well as to keep errors to a minimum. The results revealed that positive schizotypy was being influenced of context cues on reaction time. Disorganized schizotypy was related to the facilitation of reaction times during the task. It is suggested that the inhibition and facilitation of reaction times are interacting for a part at different cognitive processes (Steel et al., 2007).