Verbal self-monitoring in individuals with schizotypal personality traits: An exploratory ERP study

Abstract

© 2014 Elsevier B.V. Introduction: Individuals with schizophrenia have deficits in verbal self-monitoring. This study aimed to assess whether individuals vulnerable to develop schizophrenia show similar difficulties. Methods: Fifteen individuals with schizotypal personality traits and 15 healthy controls participated. All participants underwent an event-related potential (ERP) paradigm using a phoneme monitoring Go/No-Go task. Results: Behavioural results showed that there was no significant difference between individuals with schizotypal personality traits and controls in post-error slowing, but schizotypal individuals had a significantly lower degree of error awareness and higher error rate. In the ERP data, when compared with controls, individuals with schizotypal personality traits showed similar error-related negativity (ERN) amplitude but significantly larger error positivity (Pe) amplitude. Conclusions: Results of this study suggest that verbal error detection may be intact in individuals with schizotypal personality traits. However, it seems that this vulnerable population may have a greater emotional evaluation of errors.