Automatic versus controlled semantic priming in schizophrenia.
Schizophrenic individuals (n = 31), including paranoid and nonparanoid diagnostic subgroups, and normal controls (n = 20) participated in a semantic priming experiment involving a single-choice lexical decision task. For the automatic priming blocks, a 260-ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was used; for the controlled priming blocks, 1,000-ms SOA was used. The paranoid subgroup showed significantly less priming than did the control group. The nonparanoid subgroup showed a decrease in priming compared with the control group that approached significance. There was an increased priming effect for the controlled compared with the automatic priming condition; this difference was not modulated by participant group. Nonsignificant semantic priming (equal to 0) occurred only for schizophrenic subgroups and only in automatic priming conditions.
Ober
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BA
Department of Human and Community Development, University of California, Davis 95616, USA. baober@ucdavis.edu
Vinogradov
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S
Shenaut
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GK
D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012563:Schizophrenia, Paranoid / Q000523:psychology; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology*