title: Heterogeneity in cognitive functioning of schizophrenic patients evaluated by a lexical decision task.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The disorganization pattern in schizophrenia, which involves formal thought disorders, is thought to be correlated with a deficit in integrative processes of contextual information. We tested the hypothesis that thought disordered schizophrenics, unlike non-though disordered schizophrenics, would present a deficit in the processing of the context during a task which involves these integrative processes.
  
  
  METHODS
  A group of 22 schizophrenic patients diagnosed in accordance with DSM-III-R criteria and a group of 11 control subjects were compared using a semantic priming version of the lexical decision task. The experimental design used low-level structuration of verbal material to reveal the difficulty that schizophrenic patients encounter in using semantic regularities.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A significant difference in priming effect was found between the three groups. Control subjects and non-thought disordered schizophrenics exhibit a priming effect for related word pairs when compared with unrelated pairs (respectively F(1,10) = 17.7; P < 0.002 and f(1,10) = 14.5; P > 0.003) but thought disordered schizophrenics did not (F(1,10) < 1; NS).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This finding provides evidence for the cognitive heterogeneity of schizophrenic subjects. This absence of priming effect in thought-disordered schizophrenic subjects supports the hypothesis that these patients present a deficit in the post-lexical controlled information processing that permits the integration of semantic information.
authors.affiliation: INSERM Unité de Recherche U302, Hôpital de la Pitié-Salpétrière, Université René Descartes et CNRS, Paris, France.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Passerieux
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Segui
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Besche
authors.forename: J F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Chevalier
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Widlöcher
authors.forename: M C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Hardy-Baylé
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011930:Reaction Time; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000175:diagnosis*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D012660:Semantics; D014705:Verbal Behavior