Neurophysiological evidence for a processing bias towards schizophrenia-associated communication abnormalities.

BACKGROUND

The current study aimed to examine the effects of diagnostic and symptomatic information on auditory linguistic event-related potentials (ERPs) in the listener, in response to speech containing schizophrenia-associated communication abnormalities.

METHODS

73 participants listened to conversation segments while continuous EEG was recorded. Participants were told that the responder in the conversation was either a university student, had symptoms from a stroke, had symptoms from schizophrenia, or had recovered from schizophrenia. The final word of the response was randomly presented as a typical ending, word approximation, neologism, or filler ending.

RESULTS

A significant N400 was observed over centro-parietal electrode sites in response to word approximations and neologisms in the university student condition only. There were no differences between conditions in the N100 ERP, and EEG measures were not related to either subjective or objective measures of stigmatizing attitudes.

CONCLUSIONS

The N400 effect may represent disengagement, at a semantic level, from what an individual is saying based on symptomatic or diagnostic information about schizophrenia.