Contextual predictability enhances reading performance in Schizophrenic persons

FERNÁNDEZ GERARDO ABEL; OROZCO DAVID; SAPOGNIKOFF MARCELO; GUINJOAN SALVADOR; AGAMENNONI OSVALDO

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Encuentro; neurocog2015; 2015

UBA CONICET

In the present work we analyzed fixation duration in 40 healthy individuals and 18 patients with chronic, stable schizophrenia (SZ) during reading of regular sentences and proverbs. While they read, their eye movements were recorded. We used lineal mixed models to analyze fixation durations. The predictability of words N-1, N, and N+1 exerted a strong influence on controls and SZ patients. The influence of the predictabilities of preceding, current, and upcoming words on SZ was clearly reduced for proverbs in comparison to regular sentences. Both controls and SZ readers were able to use highly predictable fixated words for efficient reading. Our results suggest that SZ readers might compensate attentional and working memory deficiencies by using stored information of familiar texts for enhancing their reading performance. The predictabilities of words in proverbs serve as task-appropriate cues that are used by SZ readers. In summary, the findings are a demonstration of how SZ might compensate top-down processing and working memory deficiencies by using stored information due to familiarity with the proverbs. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study measuring how patients with SZ process well-defined words embedded in regular sentences and proverbs. Evaluation of the resulting changes in fixation durations might provide a useful tool for understanding how SZ patients could enhance their working memory performance.