title: Immediate affective motivation is not impaired in schizophrenia.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Among the various cognitive and affective evaluations that contribute to decisions about whether to engage in a future activity, three affective evaluations are particularly relevant: 1) interest in the activity itself, 2) the pleasure anticipated from the activity and 3) the excitement experienced while looking forward to the activity. In addition to these pre-activity evaluations, affective evaluations that are done after the activity is completed impact people's motivation to repeat the same activity. Although extant research suggests that these affective processes may be impaired in schizophrenia, it is not clear whether these impairments are mostly secondary to cognitive deficits.
  
  
  METHODS
  In three independent studies utilizing simple laboratory tasks with minimal cognitive demands, patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and healthy control subjects evaluated their pleasure, interest, and excitement immediately before and after completing the tasks.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Patients' anticipated pleasure and posttest evaluations of pleasure and interest were significantly greater than controls'. No group differences were found for excitement. In patients, there were significant negative correlations between anticipated pleasure, pretest excitement and depression scores, and between pretest interest and negative symptoms.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In these experiments, immediate affective evaluations reported by participants with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder were greater or similar to controls'. This finding is consistent with recent affective research showing that experiences of pleasure are intact in schizophrenia. These results emphasize the need to disentangle affective from cognitive processes in order to better understand the complex impairments present in schizophrenia spectrum disorders.
authors.affiliation: Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY, United States; Department of Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, United States; Rockland Psychiatric Center, Orangeburg, NY, United States; Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York, NY, United States. Electronic address: Ftremeau@NKI.RFMH.ORG.
authors.forename: Fabien
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Trémeau
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, United States; University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, United States.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Antonius
authors.affiliation: Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY, United States; Department of Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, United States.
authors.forename: Karen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Nolan
authors.affiliation: Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY, United States; Department of Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, United States.
authors.forename: Pamela
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Butler
authors.affiliation: Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY, United States; Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York, NY, United States.
authors.forename: Daniel C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Javitt
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009042:Motivation; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000150:complications*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology
keywords: Affect; Anticipation; Excitement; Interest; Motivation; Pleasure