Editorial: Cognition Across the Psychiatric Disorder Spectrum: From Mental Health to Clinical Diagnosis

Schizophrenia is a common psychiatric diagnosis affecting approximately 0.7% of the population worldwide (1). Cognitive symptoms in schizophrenia, such as impaired memory, poor attention/information processing, and difficulties with executive functions, are a core feature of schizophrenia and strongly related to quality of life and functional outcomes, yet generally respond poorly to current treatment options (2, 3). Further research exploring the basis of cognitive impairments in schizophrenia is essential to allow for better targeted treatment options. Improved cognition would pave a much better path to functional recovery for people with schizophrenia, for example, increasing the chances of someone being able to return towork or studywhen their positive psychotic symptoms are stabilized. One avenue that has emerged as a way to study symptoms of schizophrenia, such as cognition, is the study of schizotypy. Schizotypy refers to subclinical psychotic experiences (which can include odd behaviors, strange speech, unusual perceptual experiences, and social anhedonia) that are distributed along a continuum, from mental health to a diagnosable psychiatric disorder. While the term schizotypy was coined over six decades ago (4), research examining schizotypal traits in non-clinical populations has rapidly expanded over the last few years (a recent PsychInfo search of the term “schizotypy” – conducted 19/05/2015 – showed more than 5850 publications, with more than half of those publications in the last 5 years). The exploration of schizotypymay help elucidatemany factors related to the etiology and development of schizophrenia spectrum psychopathology, including cognition. It is timely and important to collate current research exploring schizotypy and determine how this avenue of research can inform our understanding of cognition across the schizophrenia spectrum. The aim of this Research Topic is to provide updated knowledge, reviews, and opinion pieces in relation to cognition, schizotypy, and the schizophrenia continuum. Drawing on a variety of perspectives and collating the results of several experimental studieswill informon the current status of schizotypy research and allow future research directions to be identified. Three key sectionswill be explored: schizotypy as a construct, including theoretical and methodological considerations when assessing schizotypy; a comprehensive review of dopaminergic contributions to schizotypy; and, several empirical research studies exploring cognition and symptomatology across the schizophrenia and schizotypy spectrum. Schizotypy has been conceptualized as both taxonic/categorical and dimensional. The categorical approach (5) is based on a disease model of mental illness and considers schizotypy to be a subclinical expression of the symptoms of schizophrenia that are present in a small subgroup of the population (approximately 10%). The fully dimensional approach (6) stems from Eysenck’s dimensional views of personality and describes schizotypy as continuous throughout the general population with higher levels of schizotypy, in combination with other etiological risk factors, to indicate a greater risk for developing schizophrenia. In this Research Topic, Mason (7) provides an