Examining measures of schizotypy for gender and racial bias using item response theory and differential item functioning.

Schizotypy involves schizophrenia-like traits and symptoms, with the Wisconsin Schizotypy Scales (WSS) being frequently used in previous research. There is some evidence that schizophrenia-spectrum symptom levels, including when using the WSS, might vary both by gender and by race and ethnicity. However, previous research has rarely examined to what extent the WSS show gender and racial bias.

Examining associations between social anhedonia and convergent thinking using the Remote Associates Test.

Social anhedonia (SocAnh) predicts increased risk of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, with evidence that these disorders are associated with increased creativity. However, it is still largely unknown whether SocAnh is associated with one central aspect of creative thinking, convergent thinking. In two studies, college students with either extreme levels of SocAnh ( = 44 and  = 70) or controls with an average level of SocAnh ( = 111 and  = 100) completed a convergent thinking task, the Remote Associates Test, and also completed measures of current affect.

Associations between long-term psychosis risk, probabilistic category learning, and attenuated psychotic symptoms with cortical surface morphometry.

Neuroimaging studies have consistently found structural cortical abnormalities in individuals with schizophrenia, especially in structural hubs. However, it is unclear what abnormalities predate psychosis onset and whether abnormalities are related to behavioral performance and symptoms associated with psychosis risk. Using surface-based morphometry, we examined cortical volume, gyrification, and thickness in a psychosis risk group at long-term risk for developing a psychotic disorder (n = 18; i.

Positive schizotypy, maladaptive openness, and openness facets.

Positive schizotypy includes magical beliefs and unusual perceptual experiences and is highly correlated with the cognitive-perceptual symptoms of schizotypal personality disorder. Increased openness to experience is associated with increased genetic risk for schizophrenia, and it has been commonly thought that positive schizotypy might also be related to increased openness. However, much previous research has failed to identify a sizable association between positive schizotypy and openness.

Psychosis risk is associated with decreased white matter integrity in limbic network corticostriatal tracts.

It is thought that altered connectivity between the striatum and the cortex could contribute to psychosis. However, whether psychosis risk is associated with altered white matter connectivity between the striatum and any cortical region is still unclear. Further, no previous study has directly examined whether psychosis risk is associated with altered striatal connectivity with specific cortical networks.

Daily-life affective instability in emotional distress disorders is associated with function and structure of posterior parietal cortex.

Affective instability (i.e., large and frequent shifts in negative emotions) is a key emotion dysregulation symptom in emotional distress disorders and can be reliably and validly assessed using ambulatory assessment.

Explicit and Implicit Affect and Judgment in Schizotypy.

Although emotion deficits in schizotypy have been reported, the exact nature of these deficits is now well understood. Specifically, for social anhedonia (SocAnh), there are questions about whether any decrease in positive affect only reflects an explicit bias not observed in other measures (e.g.

Psychosis risk is associated with decreased resting-state functional connectivity between the striatum and the default mode network.

Psychosis is linked to aberrant salience or to viewing neutral stimuli as self-relevant, suggesting a possible impairment in self-relevance processing. Psychosis is also associated with increased dopamine in the dorsal striatum, especially the anterior caudate (Kegeles et al., 2010).

Body Dysmorphic, Obsessive-Compulsive, and Social Anxiety Disorder Beliefs as Predictors of In Vivo Stressor Responding.

This study tested the potential transdiagnostic nature of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and social anxiety disorder (SAD) beliefs, in addition to testing the specificity of those beliefs, in predicting how individuals responded to symptom-specific stressors. Participants included 127 adults (75% women) with a broad range of symptom severity. Path analysis was used to evaluate whether specific maladaptive beliefs predicted distress in response to symptom-relevant stressors over and above other beliefs and baseline distress.