Frontal dysfunction and psychosis proneness in CPT-linked vulnerable adolescents

The main goal of this study was to examine the performance on frontal lobe tests of normal adolescent subjects and subjects psychometrically denned as schizotypics using double criteria: (1) a CPT-linked attention deficit vulnerability and (2) a psychosis proneness measured with the Chapmanʹs perceptual aberration scale (PAS) and the social anhedonia scale (SAS). Frontal lobe performance was assessed with the Wisconsin card sorting test (WCST), the trail-making test (TMT) and a word generation test. Overall, results show that subjects with both a CPT-linked vulnerability and a psychosis proneness did worse than the rest of subjects in most frontal lobe tests, suggesting the existence of a subtle frontal-lobe dysfunction in ‘normal’ adolescents that are at increased risk for schizophrenia. Our results agree with current theories that hypothesize a possible frontal-limbic dysfunction latent in schizophrenia spectrum disorders. The importance of an accurate definition of schizotypy, the specificity of the instruments and new approaches to the study of schizotypy are discussed.