Is disorganization a feature of schizophrenia or a modifying influence: Evidence of covariation of perceptual and cognitive organization in a non-patient sample

Abstract

A subgroup of people with schizophrenia is characterized by reduced organization in perception, thought, language, and motor functioning, and these impairments covary significantly. While this may reflect multiple expressions of an illness-related core processing impairment, it may also represent the extreme end of an organization-disorganization dimension that is found throughout the general population. In this view, disorganization is a modifying influence on illness expression. To obtain preliminary information on this hypothesis, we examined covariation of perceptual and cognitive organization in a non-patient sample. Subjects completed a battery of perceptual tasks with demonstrated sensitivity to schizophrenia and disorganization, and a battery of questionnaires examining cognitive organization. Our results indicated that level of perceptual organization ability, across multiple tasks, was associated with self-reported levels of cognitive organization on multiple measures. This is thus preliminary evidence for a common process affecting perceptual and cognitive organization in the general population, suggesting that disorganization may reflect a modifying influence mechanism, instead of an illness-related process, in schizophrenia.

Data gathering ability contributes to visual organization and probabilistic reasoning

“…This set of trials also served as a control on understanding the directions: if subjects were making their selections based on total stimulus size (the targets and the surrounds), they would make the incorrect decision every time. There were 16 presentations of this condition, consistent with previous studies ( Doherty et al., 2008 ; Feigenson et al., 2014 ; Phillips et al., 2004 ; Silverstein et al., 2013 ). The helpful and misleading conditions comprised the context conditions, and contained a total of 96 trials (80 in the misleading, and 16 in the helpful conditions), presented randomly.…”

“…(2004) . This task has been used effectively in multiple replications ( Doherty et al., 2008 , 2010 ; Feigenson et al., 2014 ; Horton and Silverstein, 2011 ; Silverstein et al., 2013 ). Subjects made a forced choice decision about which target circle, presented in the left or right side of the screen, was larger, when alone or surrounded by different arrangements of relatively larger or smaller circles in the context condition.…”

Sensory integration deficits support a dimensional view of psychosis and are not limited to schizophrenia

“… 23 One further point worth future investigation is the extent to which the findings here are limited to the acute state of illness, due to our recruitment from an acute psychiatry inpatient unit. As previous studies suggest that sensory integration impairments may be related to core dimensions of functioning that are potentially distinct from psychosis but covary with it, 51 future research should interrogate specific temporal relationships between symptomatology and integration deficits in more detail.…”

Contour integration impairment in schizophrenia and first episode psychosis: State or trait?

“…The CI task was implemented in the same way as in previous studies (Feigenson et al, 2014; Kozma-Weibe, 2006; Silverstein et al, 2009; Silverstein et al, 2012). Stimuli comprised a non-continuous path of individual Gabor elements forming an egg shaped closed contour which itself was embedded within an array of noise Gabor elements (see Fig.…”