title: Latent inhibition, learned irrelevance, and schizotypy: assessing their relationship.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Previous research suggests that latent inhibition is reduced in patients with acute schizophrenia and in healthy participants with high levels of schizotypic characteristics. Other evidence indicates the disruption of a related effect (learned irrelevance) in patients with acute schizophrenia.
  
  
  METHODS
  This study used a recently developed latent inhibition procedure, that avoids methodological limitations of previous studies, and a related learned irrelevance procedure to assess the relationship between these phenomena and schizotypic characteristics in undergraduate participants.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Participants preexposed to a letter (S) learnt the predictive relationship between that letter and another letter (X) slower than the relationship between a novel letter and X (a latent inhibition effect). Experiment 1 found reduced latent inhibition in the high schizotypy group after 10, but not 20 preexposures. In Experiment 2, participants preexposed to both S and X learnt a subsequent relationship between them slower than the relationship between a novel letter and X (a learned irrelevance effect). This effect was abolished in participants with high levels of schizotypy.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These results are both the first demonstration of abolished learned irrelevance and of a significant reduction in latent inhibition without employing an explicit masking task in participants with high levels of positive schizotypy.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK. SchmidtHansenM1@cardiff.ac.uk
authors.forename: Mia
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Schmidt-Hansen
authors.forename: A S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Killcross
authors.forename: R C
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Honey
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D011932:Reading; D012569:Schizotypal Personality Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult