Schizotypal personality traits and the social learning of fear

Abstract

Schizotypy can be defined as a combination of traits qualitatively similar to those found in schizophrenia, but milder in their expression, that can be found in clinical and non-clinical populations. In this research, we explore, to our knowledge, for the first time, whether schizotypal personality traits may affect the acquisition of conditioned fear by social means only. Apart from being an essential capacity to ensure learning in safe environments, social fear learning shares important characteristics with direct fear acquisition, which also makes it a great candidate for developing successful extinction procedures. Undergraduate students (n = 72) performed a task of social fear learning. In this task, participants watched a video of a person that simulated to receive electric shocks (unconditioned stimulus; US) paired with a coloured square (conditioned stimulus plus; CS+), while another coloured square was never paired (conditioned stimulus minus; CS−) with the shock. After that, they were presented with a similar sequence of coloured screens. Their Skin Conductance Responses (SCRs) were registered during the whole process. Once they finished, they completed the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ). Our results revealed that participants with a low score in the Cognitive-Perceptual factor of the SPQ exhibited higher SCRs when they saw the US than when they saw the CS− (all ps < 0.01) during the learning phase. Nevertheless, those with higher scores did not present any difference in their SCRs toward both stimuli (all ps > 0.05), a pattern that has been similarly found in schizophrenia. During the final trials of the test phase, participants with the highest scores in the Disorganized factor were the only ones that maintained a higher SCR towards the CS+ than towards the CS− (p = 0.006), which could be associated with an impairment in their extinction processes.

Learning from others' experience: Social fear conditioning deficits in patients with severe alcohol use disorder

“…During the test phase, we replicated the general SFL effect (Espinosa et al, 2020; González‐Rodríguez et al, 2021) but also found an interaction between CS and group such that only healthy controls showed a higher SCR in response to the CS+ compared to CS−. This important result indicates significant learning in the control group and nonexistent learning in the patients with severe AUD.…”

“…This task was chosen because it is a reliable and sensitive paradigm to evaluate social learning. Indeed, this paradigm has been used recently among persons with mental health disorders such as autistic spectrum disorder (Espinosa et al, 2020) or schizotypal personality (González-Rodríguez et al, 2021).…”

People with High Schizotypy Experience More Illusions in the Pattern Glare Test: Consistent with the Hyperexcitability Hypothesis

“…Here, we used the PGT to test for behavioral evidence of hyperexcitability as a function of schizotypy symptomatology in thenon-clinical population. Schizotypy refers to individuals in the general population that vary in schizotypal traits (Broyd et al, 2016;González-Rodríguez et al, 2021;Kwapil & Barrantes-Vidal, 2015). The non-clinical population is appealing because it avoids concerns related to the effects of antipsychotic medications (see Ettinger et al, 2015 for review; Kelemen et al, 2013), high schizotypy individuals have similar sensory profiles to SSD (Broyd et al, 2016;Moussa-Tooks et al, 2021;Myles et al, 2017;Nelson et al, 2013), and they are accessible.…”

People with high schizotypy experience more illusions in the Pattern Glare Test: Consistent with the hyperexcitability hypothesis

“…Here, we used the PGT to test for behavioural evidence of hyperexcitability as a function of schizotypy symptomatology in the non‐clinical population. Schizotypy refers to individuals in the general population that vary in schizotypal traits (Broyd et al, 2016; González‐Rodríguez et al, 2021; Kwapil & Barrantes‐Vidal, 2015). The non‐clinical population is appealing because it avoids concerns related to the effects of antipsychotic medications (see Ettinger et al, 2015 for review; Kelemen et al, 2013), high schizotypy individuals have similar sensory profiles to SSD (Broyd et al, 2016; Moussa‐Tooks et al, 2021; Myles et al, 2017; Nelson et al, 2013), and they are accessible.…”