This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on ISI (61)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Schizophrenia  • Alert me on articles by topic

Gillian A. O'Driscoll, PhD; Mark F. Lenzenweger, PhD; Philip S. Holzman, PhD

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1998;55:837-843.

Background  Eye tracking deficits are one of a few widely validated behavioral markers of risk for schizophrenia. Recently, it has been proposed that antisaccade performance may also constitute a marker of schizophrenia risk. This study investigated whether eye tracking and antisaccade deficits could be found in another population with putative liability to schizophrenia—nonclinical subjects with elevated scores on a psychometric index of perceptual aberrations.

Methods  Subjects were 55 university students who received either high or normal scores on the Perceptual Aberration Scale, a measure of schizotypy indexing body image and perceptual distortions. Subjects completed a smooth pursuit eye tracking task and an antisaccade task. Eye movements were monitored using an infrared limbus tracker.

Results  Subjects with high Perceptual Aberration Scale scores (putative "schizotypes") had lower pursuit quality and a lower percentage correct on the antisaccade task than the controls. The 2 groups did not differ in antisaccade or error latencies. The increase in antisaccade errors in the schizotypes was accounted for almost entirely by an increase in perseverative errors, but virtually no difference between groups on random errors. Antisaccade performance was significantly related to pursuit quality.

Conclusions  Subjects with elevated Perceptual Aberration Scale scores have performance deficits on oculomotor tasks that have been linked to latent liability to schizophrenia, namely, smooth pursuit and antisaccade performance. The antisaccade errors in the schizotype group were primarily perseverations, a behavioral pattern often associated with frontal lobe dysfunction and observed in the performance of schizophrenic patients.

From the Department of Psychology, McGill University, and the Department of Psychiatry, McGill Medical School, Montreal, Quebec (Dr O'Driscoll); Laboratory of Experimental Psychopathology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, and the Department of Psychiatry, Cornell University Medical College, New York City (Dr Lenzenweger); and the Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, and Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, and McLean Hospital, Belmont (Dr Holzman), Mass.

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Cognitive Deficits in Unaffected First-Degree Relatives of Schizophrenia Patients: A Meta-analytic Review of Putative Endophenotypes
Snitz et al.
Schizophr Bull 2006;32:179-194.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

A Concordance Study of Three Electrophysiological Measures in Schizophrenia
Louchart-de la Chapelle et al.
Am. J. Psychiatry 2005;162:466-474.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Neuronal Substrate of the Saccadic Inhibition Deficit in Schizophrenia Investigated With 3-Dimensional Event-Related Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Raemaekers et al.
Arch Gen Psychiatry 2002;59:313-320.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Neural Correlates of Eye Tracking Deficits in First-degree Relatives of Schizophrenic Patients: A Positron Emission Tomography Study
O'Driscoll et al.
Arch Gen Psychiatry 1999;56:1127-1134.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT