Journal
PERSONALITY AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
Volume 39, Issue 4, Pages 705-713Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2005.02.019
Keywords
automatic spreading activation; creativity; executive functioning; hallucinations; phonological (letter) fluency; positive/negative schizotypy; individual differences in speech production
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia have been differentially associated with irregularities in verbal production, suggesting the involvement of different underlying mechanisms in psychotic symptomatology. In view of that, the present investigation examined whether the amount of verbal production would be also differentially associated with negative and positive symptoms of psychometric schizotypy in a sample of college students (N = 190). The participants were tested on a typical verbal fluency test and completed the O-LIFE schizotypy scales. The analyses revealed that decreased verbal fluency was associated with increased levels of negative schizotypy in participants who scored one standard deviation above the mean on Introvertive Anhedonia. In contrast, increased verbal fluency was associated with increased levels of positive schizotypy in participants who scored one standard deviation above the mean on Unusual Experiences. The obtained results are discussed in terms of the proposal that psychotic-like unusual experiences, like hallucinations, may be the product of a higher automatic spreading activation among stored lexical units, a mechanism which seems to account for the previously reported link between positive schizotypy and creativity. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available