Overshadowing depends on cue and reinforcement sensitivity but not schizotypy

Abstract

There is evidence for impaired selective learning mechanisms in individuals high in schizotypy. Overshadowing provides a direct test of selective learning based on cue salience and has previously been reported to be impaired in relation to schizotypy scores. The present study tested for overshadowing using food allergy and Lego construction task variants. Both variants used the same number of conditioned stimulus (CS) cues and the same number of learning trials. CS cues were trained in compound pairs or in isolation and overshadowing was subsequently tested on trials followed by negative versus positive outcomes. Participants also completed the O-LIFE to measure schizotypy and BIS-BAS scales to measure reinforcement sensitivity. Learning was demonstrated for both cue variants; however overshadowing emerged only in the Lego variant and only on the trials followed by the negative outcome. Contrary to expectations, there was no evidence for any relationship between overshadowing and O-LIFE scores. However, there was evidence of a positive relationship between overshadowing and BAS-Drive as well as a negative relationship with BIS-Anxiety, for the trials followed by the positive outcome in the food allergy variant. These results suggest that the development of overshadowing depends on cue and reinforcement sensitivity, but not necessarily on schizotypy. Behavioural Brain Research 3

Investigating how individual differences in selective attention relate to schizotypy and altered states of consciousness.

“…In other cases, individuals higher in schizotypy may perform worse due to tendencies to perseverate on irrelevant stimuli when predictive ones are available. However, there remains debate about whether differences may be due to reinforcement sensitivity as opposed to selective attention per se (Pickett et al, 2017), and several studies have failed to replicate blocking and latent inhibition effects (Jones et al, 1992(Jones et al, , 1997Swerdlow et al, 1996).…”