title: Aberrant interference of auditory negative words on attention in patients with schizophrenia.
abstract: Previous research suggests that deficits in attention-emotion interaction are implicated in schizophrenia symptoms. Although disruption in auditory processing is crucial in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia, deficits in interaction between emotional processing of auditorily presented language stimuli and auditory attention have not yet been clarified. To address this issue, the current study used a dichotic listening task to examine 22 patients with schizophrenia and 24 age-, sex-, parental socioeconomic background-, handedness-, dexterous ear-, and intelligence quotient-matched healthy controls. The participants completed a word recognition task on the attended side in which a word with emotionally valenced content (negative/positive/neutral) was presented to one ear and a different neutral word was presented to the other ear. Participants selectively attended to either ear. In the control subjects, presentation of negative but not positive word stimuli provoked a significantly prolonged reaction time compared with presentation of neutral word stimuli. This interference effect for negative words existed whether or not subjects directed attention to the negative words. This interference effect was significantly smaller in the patients with schizophrenia than in the healthy controls. Furthermore, the smaller interference effect was significantly correlated with severe positive symptoms and delusional behavior in the patients with schizophrenia. The present findings suggest that aberrant interaction between semantic processing of negative emotional content and auditory attention plays a role in production of positive symptoms in schizophrenia. (224 words).
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuropsychiatry, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Norichika
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Iwashiro
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuropsychiatry, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan ; Global Center of Excellence (COE) Program, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Noriaki
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Yahata
authors.affiliation: Takada-Nishishiro Hospital, Jyoetsu-shi, Niigata, Japan.
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kawamuro
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuropsychiatry, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan ; JST, National Bioscience Database Center (NBDC), Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Kiyoto
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kasai
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuropsychiatry, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Hidenori
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yamasue
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D012660:Semantics; D013067:Speech Perception