Individuals with schizophrenia exhibit a range of abnormalities in self-reported non-current experience of pleasure, but undisrupted current experience of pleasure. Several researchers have sought to address the mechanism of this deficit, yielding useful models of anhedonia. The accessibility model of emotional self-report suggests that deficits in hedonic response are due to differential activation of, and reliance upon, semantic and episodic memory systems. While this model has been proposed as an explanation of the deficits in hedonic response in schizophrenia, it has not been experimentally validated, and it remains to be seen whether the model will hold across the schizophrenia spectrum. The neurodevelopmental model of schizophrenia emphasizes the importance of understanding these deficits in individuals who are prone to psychosis, but may never manifest diagnosable disorder. The current study therefore sought to experimentally test the accessibility model of hedonic deficit in a sample of 92 individuals. Participants performed a task examining memory of emotionally valenced words designed to elicit semantically related emotional information. Overall, schizotypy was unrelated to abnormalities in memory performance in response to semantically congruent information. However, in disorganized schizotypy, semantic bias was a significant partial mediator of the relationship between schizotypy and current affective ratings. This result suggests the presence of abnormalities in semantic networks that contribute to differential current affective ratings to positively valenced stimuli.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-11162015-131202 |
| Date | 11 December 2015 |
| Creators | Mitchell, Kyle Robert |
| Contributors | Calamia, Matthew, Hicks, Jason, Cohen, Alex |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-11162015-131202/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
Page generated in 0.0126 seconds