Schizotypy and language: A review

Cognition and Brain Function in Schizotypy: A Selective Review

“…While nonliteral language comprehension problems seem correlated with schizotypy across the spectrum, 80,102 the association in nonclinical schizotypy is subtle 103 or even controversial, 100,104 but still detectable on the neural level. 105 A number of mechanisms may contribute to these deficits, 106 including semantic association differences, [107][108][109] aberrant semantic priming mechanisms, 106 and inadequate context integration. 110,111 Most likely both cerebral hemispheres contribute to language differences associated with elevated schizotypy, 80,105 with the right hemisphere thought to play an important role in loosening of associations and pragmatic language deficits in schizotypy.…”

An event‐related potential study of predictive and integrative semantic context processing in subjects with schizotypal traits

“…These limitations can be overcome by working with healthy subjects with schizotypal personality traits, in line with the notion of a continuum from normal personality variation to psychosis (Claridge, ; Verdoux & van Os, ). It has been shown that subjects with schizotypal traits share a genetic diathesis with schizophrenia patients, together with several neurocognitive abnormalities (Raine, Lencz, & Mednick, ) including semantic processing disturbances (Kiang, ). Indeed, numerous studies have reported a reduced N400 effect among subjects with high rather than low schizotypal traits (Kiang & Kutas, ; Kiang, Prugh, & Kutas, ; Kimble et al., ) and among those with schizotypal personality disorder (SPD) compared with healthy subjects (Niznikiewicz et al., ).…”

Making sense of social interaction: Emotional coherence drives semantic integration as assessed by event-related potentials

“…Personality traits have the potential to influence language processing and related brain waves, e.g. schizotypy and the N400 (Kiang, 2010;Kutas, 2006). Our correlation analyses of personality characteristics for the early and the N400 effect may indeed offer some potentially interesting results: all correlations emerging as significant -though uncorrected for multiple testingin either of both processing stages (note their general consistency across early and late ERP effects) involve the high affective deflection condition : Higher scores on Agreeableness seem to be associated with decreased respective ERP effects in the early as well as in the N400 time window, potentially due to an Agreeableness-related judgment style more liberally semantically integrating even immoral events.…”

“…Since we consider the present study as an interdisciplinary approach integrating scientific results related to language processing from the level of single words and sentence processing up to the level of social cognition, we also wanted to tackle individual differences concerning this subject at least in an exploratory mode. As personal traits such as schizotypy have been shown to modulate N400 amplitudes in language processing studies -probably due to a deficient use of context in integration processing - (Kutas & Federmeier, 2011;Kiang, Prugh, & Kutas, 2010, for a review on schizotypy and language, see Kiang, 2010) we administered the Schizotypy Personality Questionnaire (SPQ; Raine, 1991; German version: SPQ-G; Klein, Andresen, & Jahn, 1997) to investigate potential individual differences. With regard to the well-established personality-emotion relationships (Fossum & Barrett, 2000) on affective processing especially concerning the correlations of negative emotions with neuroticism and positive emotions with extraversion (e.g.…”