title: The attentional boost effect in schizophrenia.
abstract: The present study reports 2 experiments examining the Attentional Boost Effect (ABE) in schizophrenic patients and matched healthy controls, using visual and verbal materials. The ABE refers to the surprising finding that, in a divided attention condition, images and words encoded with targets are remembered better than images and words encoded with distractors. Unlike controls (who showed the typical ABE), schizophrenic patients reported no memory advantage for stimuli presented together with targets in the divided attention condition. On the other hand, the interference effect on the recognition of stimuli presented with distractors was not exacerbated in patients (as compared with controls). In line with the dual-task interaction model proposed by Swallow and Jiang (2013), the absence of a significant facilitation indicates that schizophrenic patients have a deficit in the process of attentional enhancement triggered by target detection. A number of neural mechanisms potentially underlying this impairment are discussed, as well as implications for the characterization of the attentional deficits involved in schizophrenia.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome.
authors.forename: Clelia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Rossi-Arnaud
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome.
authors.forename: Pietro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Spataro
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome.
authors.forename: Daniele
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Saraulli
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina.
authors.forename: Neil W
authors.initials: NW
authors.lastname: Mulligan
authors.affiliation: Acute Psychiatric Care Unit, Department of Mental Health RM-G, San Giovanni Evangelista Hospital.
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sciarretta
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome.
authors.forename: Valeria R S
authors.initials: VR
authors.lastname: Marques
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome.
authors.forename: Vincenzo
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Cestari
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology