According to various diathesis-stress models of schizophrenia, life stress plays a defining role in the onset and course of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. In this regard, individual differences in coping strategies and affective traits, variables related to the management and experience of stress, may play a large role in susceptibility to the disorder and symptom exacerbation. Furthermore, ...

Heavy cannabis use is associated with interpersonal problems that may arise in part from the inaccurate perception of emotional faces. Only one study reports impairments in emotional facial affect processing in heavy cannabis users; however, it is not clear whether these findings were attributable to differences between cannabis users and controls in schizotypy or gender, rather than from canna...

Positive and negative schizotypy may represent discrete factors or dimensions. To determine if distinct neurocognitive profiles are associated with these dimensions or factors, we classified university students on the basis of positive and negative schizotypal symptoms and conducted separate analyses. Following prior work in the neuropsychiatric literature, we predicted that subtle prefrontal d...

Developmental theories highlight the salience of attachment theory in explaining vulnerability towards psychosis. At the same time there is increasing recognition that psychosis is associated with childhood trauma variables. This study explored the interaction between attachment and several trauma variables in relation to schizotypy levels in a non-clinical sample. 283 non-clinical participants...

Personality traits such as neuroticism are associated with schizophrenia and schizotypy. However, studies thus far have not clarified the differential association of neuroticism with individual schizotypy dimensions and the role it plays in the expression of schizophrenia-spectrum psychopathology. 204 nonclinically ascertained participants completed self-report questionnaires assessing neurotic...

We examined neurocognitive correlates of three dimensions of schizotypy in 63 healthy first degree relatives of schizophrenia patients. Neurocognitive measures of attention, verbal memory, and prefrontal functioning were combined with self-report and interview measures of schizotypy. State-psychopathology (anxiety and depression) was a strong predictor for positive schizotypy (PS) and negative ...

Developed a true-false scale to measure Social Fear, which Meehl argues is a sign of schizotypy, using procedures to maximize reliability and minimize response set bias (N = 910). Interviews with selected Ss (N = 44) confirm that the scale measures social fear, and the scale was found to correlate with previously developed schizotypy scales (N = 252).

While persuasive evidence has accumulated over the past 15 years documenting an association between schizophrenia and violence, there are 3 unresolved issues. First, does a downward extension of this relationship exist at the nonclinical level with respect to schizotypal personality and aggression in children? Second, is aggression more associated with impulsive reactive aggression or with more...

While schizotypal features are common during adolescence, they can also signal increased risk for the onset of schizophreniform disorders. Most studies with adolescents find that hallucination and delusion-like symptoms (positive schizotypal features) best predict future psychopathology. Still, the developmental process of positive schizotypy remains elusive, specifically with regards to 1) its...