title: POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE SUBCLINICAL SYMPTOMS AND MCCB PERFORMANCE IN NON-PSYCHIATRIC CONTROLS.
abstract: Considerable data support the phenomenological and temporal continuity between subclinical psychosis and psychotic disorders. In recent years, neurocognitive deficits have increasingly been recognized as a core feature of psychotic illness but there are few data seeking to elucidate the relationship between subclinical psychosis and neurocogntive deficits in non-clinical samples. The goal of the present study was to examine the relationship between subclinical positive and negative symptoms, as measured by the Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences (CAPE) and performance on the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery (MCCB) in a large (n=303) and demographically diverse non-clinical sample. We found that compared to participants with low levels of subclinical positive symptoms, participants with high levels of subclinical positive symptoms performed significantlybetterin the domains of working memory (p<.001), verbal learning (p=.007) and visual learning (p=.014). Although comparison of participants with high and low levels of subclinical negative symptoms revealed no differences in MCCB performance, we found that individuals with high levels of subclinical negative symptoms performed significantly better on a measure of estimated IQ (WRAT-3 Reading subtest; p=.02) than those with low levels of subclinical negative symptoms. These results are at odds with prior reports that have generally shown a negative relationship between neurocognitive functioning and severity of subclinical psychotic symptoms, and suggest some potential discontinuities between clinically significant psychotic symptoms and sub-syndromal manifestations of psychosis.
authors.affiliation: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104.
authors.forename: Cole
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Korponay
authors.affiliation: Center for Translational Psychiatry, The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, Manhasset, NY, USA.
authors.forename: George C
authors.initials: GC
authors.lastname: Nitzburg
authors.affiliation: Center for Translational Psychiatry, The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, Manhasset, NY, USA ; Division of Psychiatry Research, The Zucker Hillside Hospital, Division of the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, Glen Oaks, NY 11004 ; Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Yeshiva University, Bronx, NY 10461 ; Hofstra North Shore - LIJ School of Medicine, Departments of Psychiatry and Molecular Medicine, Hempstead, NY 11550.
authors.forename: Anil K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Malhotra
authors.affiliation: Center for Translational Psychiatry, The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, Manhasset, NY, USA ; Division of Psychiatry Research, The Zucker Hillside Hospital, Division of the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, Glen Oaks, NY 11004.
authors.forename: Pamela
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: DeRosse
keywords: MCCB; cognition; subclinical psychosis