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Schizophrenia patients show impaired bottom-up processing and attentional adjustment

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Abstract

Schizophrenia patients have been reported to have impairments in attention. In this study, we investigated their selective attention and tested whether they have difficulties in segmenting cues from the context. Twenty-one patients with schizophrenia and twenty-one healthy controls performed an arrow Flanker task, in which a potential cue was presented above the middle stimulus in the target display. Both groups had an accuracy of over 97%. In early trials, healthy controls demonstrated flanker interference on incongruent trials (RTIncongruent > RTNeutral) and facilitation on congruent trials (RTCongruent < RTNeutral), which aligns with previous research. They exhibited sustained flanker interference on incongruent trials and a decreased or non-significant effect on congruent trials in later trials. Patients with schizophrenia, on the other hand, did not show any temporal effects or attentional adjustments. Instead, they displayed flanker interference on incongruent trials and an inverse disadvantage effect on congruent trials both early and later in the experiment. Furthermore, compared to healthy controls, patients experienced a more pronounced flanker interference effect. These findings suggest that patients with schizophrenia have impairments in both information selection and attentional adjustment. This study extends prior research by demonstrating that the impairments of attention in schizophrenia extend beyond executive control and manifest in earlier stages of bottom-up processing.

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Data availability

The data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Notes

  1. We conducted a corresponding analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) with age as the covariate to control for this potential confound. The results were similar, with a significant interaction between congruency and group, F(2, 78) = 3.22, p = .045, η2 = .08, and significant main effects of congruency and group, F(1, 63) = 7.90, p = .002, η2 = .17, and F(1, 39) = 5.19, p = .028, η2 = .12. The covariate, age, was not significant, F(1, 39) = .41, p = .527, η2 = .01. Therefore, our findings were not due to the influence of age differences between two groups.

  2. The corresponding ANCOVA revealed a significant main effect of group, F(1, 39) = 5.91, p = .02, η2 = .13. There were no significant interaction, F(2, 78) = .05, p = .95, η2 = .01, or main effect of congruency, F(2, 78) = .77, p = .49, η2 = .02. The covariate, age, was not significant as well, F(1, 39) = 1.48, p = .23, η2 = .01.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of all participants and two anonymous reviewers for their professional comments. This study was supported by start-up funds from the University of Arkansas, Little Rock to KH; partially by the Open Research Fund of the CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Key project of Beijing Education Science Planning (BEAA21046), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 31571161) to QL; and partially by NIH grants R21AG067024 and R01AG072893 to CL.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, Capital Normal University, Beijing, China

    Qi Li

  2. Institute of Mental Health, Nanjing Xiaozhuang University, Nanjing, China

    Hongmin Xu & Qiping Ren

  3. School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences and Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Shuchang He

  4. Department of Psychology, University of Arkansas, Little Rock, AR, USA

    Kesong Hu

  5. Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA

    Chiang-Shan R. Li

  6. Department of Neuroscience, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA

    Chiang-Shan R. Li

  7. Wu Tsai Institute, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Chiang-Shan R. Li

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Correspondence to Kesong Hu.

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This study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the ethics Committee of HuiLongGuan Psychiatry Hospital, Beijing.

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Li, Q., Xu, H., Ren, Q. et al. Schizophrenia patients show impaired bottom-up processing and attentional adjustment. Curr Psychol 43, 14324–14334 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-05355-w

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