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Pathways To Blunted Facial Affect In Negative Schizotypy: Social Motivation And Online Cognitive Resources, Tovah M.D. Cowan
Pathways To Blunted Facial Affect In Negative Schizotypy: Social Motivation And Online Cognitive Resources, Tovah M.D. Cowan
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Schizotypy, a range of personality traits which confer liability for schizophrenia, is associated with significantly diminished social functioning and quality of life. Social dysfunction in all forms of schizotypy, including schizophrenia, is connected to blunted affect, or diminished expressivity, particularly facial expressions which are less frequent, intense, or long than typical. However, the mechanisms and treatments for blunted affect are, as yet, poorly understood and underdeveloped. In this project, two putative mechanisms of blunted affect were explored. The first involves cognitive load capacities, which are diminished in schizotypy, causing blunted affect – individuals do not have the cognitive resources to …
General Versus Person-Specific Models Of Psychotic-Like Symptoms, Thanh Phuoc Le
General Versus Person-Specific Models Of Psychotic-Like Symptoms, Thanh Phuoc Le
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Schizophrenia is a chronic brain disease and carries a profound burden of illness and disability. Schizotypy, reflecting personality traits associated with a vulnerability for schizophrenia-spectrum pathology, is characterized, in part, by a tendency to experience psychotic-like symptoms (PLS). Perceived social support, or lack thereof, plays a role in the intensity of PLS. Etiological mechanisms underlying PLS, such as monolithic social support, are putatively expected to be common across individuals sharing elevated schizotypal traits. This “nomothetic” model fails to appreciate that social support is multidimensional and likely idiographic in its effects on PLS. Another salient issue that arises when attempting to …
Social Capitalization As A Positive Emotion Regulation Strategy In Individuals At-Risk For Developing A Schizophrenia-Spectrum Disorder, Elana Klein Schwartz
Social Capitalization As A Positive Emotion Regulation Strategy In Individuals At-Risk For Developing A Schizophrenia-Spectrum Disorder, Elana Klein Schwartz
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Extant literature indicates that emotional deficits, such as impaired emotion expression/experience, are prominent in schizophrenia-spectrum psychopathology and linked with poorer functional (e.g. social) outcomes. Interestingly, individuals exhibiting schizotypy, an underlying personality organization that confers a vulnerability to developing schizophrenia, report more abnormalities in emotion experience compared to healthy controls and individuals with schizophrenia, a phenomenon termed the “schizophrenia-spectrum emotion paradox.” To aid in the clarification of emotional abnormalities and explore the dynamic nature of emotion experience in individuals with schizotypy, the present study enrolled 93 college-aged individuals to examine positive emotion regulation through the use of social capitalization. In social …
The (B)Link Between Amotivation And Dopamine In Psychosis: What Phasic Eye Blink Rate Reveals, Jessica Elaina Mcgovern
The (B)Link Between Amotivation And Dopamine In Psychosis: What Phasic Eye Blink Rate Reveals, Jessica Elaina Mcgovern
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Motivation deficits (i.e., avolition or amotivation) are a cardinal feature of schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSDs) and are linked to worse functional outcomes. Accumulating evidence implicates underactive dopamine responses in reward areas of the brain (e.g., striatum) in the etiology of amotivation. Phasic dopamine firing in the striatum purportedly has a role in increasing the perceived value of a potential reward that, in effect, helps “push” the organism toward initiating and persisting in the action to pursue rewards. Previous research has suggested that eye blink rate (EBR) may be a reliable and valid index of striatal dopamine. Amotivation (clinician-rated and self-reported) …
Attentional Deployment, Cognitive Control, And Reappraisal In Schizophrenia, Kyle Robert Mitchell
Attentional Deployment, Cognitive Control, And Reappraisal In Schizophrenia, Kyle Robert Mitchell
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Recent studies posit that deficits in emotion regulation may lead to increased negative emotional experience in schizophrenia. While individuals with schizophrenia evidence a number of abnormalities in emotion regulation, it is unclear whether these deficits are discrete or related; furthermore, the mechanisms underlying these deficits are not clear. Cognitive control has been posited as an important mechanism supporting emotion regulation. The current study examined the relationship between attentional deployment and both lexical and self-reported indices of reappraisal, as well as the mediating role of cognitive control on this relationship in a sample of 22 individuals with psychotic disorders. A novel …
A State-Level Analysis Of Deinstitutionalization And The Impact Of Chlorpromazine, Joni Maria Lee Pow
A State-Level Analysis Of Deinstitutionalization And The Impact Of Chlorpromazine, Joni Maria Lee Pow
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
US state mental hospitals were rapidly depopulated in the decades following 1955. This was a demographic phenomenon of major proportion. The introduction of antipsychotics in 1954 has often been considered instrumental in this population movement. To date, studies of the role of antipsychotics in deinstitutionalization have been state specific, methodologically weak, inconsistent in their findings and fail to consider inter-state differences which could reveal previously unknown causal variables. This study used US Census data and pooled cross sectional time-series analysis to estimate the impact of chlorpromazine and policy changes on mental hospital population movement. To that end, the population movement …
Social Connectedness Deficits In College Students With Schizotypy, Laura Brown
Social Connectedness Deficits In College Students With Schizotypy, Laura Brown
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Schizophrenia is a devastating disorder characterized by a variety of bizarre behaviors as well as deficits in neurocognition, social cognition, and functioning. This study focuses on individuals with schizotypy—those with the purported genetic liability for schizophrenia that do not display the full disorder. Prior research has identified potential risk factors for schizophrenia by studying this population, including deficits in social cognition. Studies of social cognition in individuals with schizotypy, however, have yielded inconsistent findings that have failed to fully explain the range of functional deficits seen in these individuals. Social connectedness, in contrast, may be a more useful risk factor …
The Role Of Atypical Semantic Activation In Schizotypy: Implications For Odd Speech And Creativity, Kyle S. Minor
The Role Of Atypical Semantic Activation In Schizotypy: Implications For Odd Speech And Creativity, Kyle S. Minor
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Individuals with schizophrenia tend to demonstrate patterns of atypical semantic activation, which are characterized by increased activation of weakly associated words within the semantic network. Although atypical semantic activation is associated with formal thought disorder, tangential speech, and poor long-term functioning in schizophrenia, very little is known about this variable in individuals with schizotypy, or the 10% of the population who demonstrate personality traits presumed to reflect genetic liability to schizophrenia. In this project, we employed highly sensitive laboratory procedures to test whether individuals with schizotypy (n = 45) display increased atypical semantic activation compared to a non-schizotypy group (n …
Qualitative Scoring Of The Rey 15-Item Memory Test In A Forensic Population, James A. Martin
Qualitative Scoring Of The Rey 15-Item Memory Test In A Forensic Population, James A. Martin
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Several studies have examined the ability of the Rey 15-Item Memory Test (MFIT) to identify malingering of memory problems among a variety of psychiatric and neurologically impaired populations. The consensus has been that the quantitative scoring method is overly sensitive to genuine memory impairment and lacks sensitivity to simulated amnesia. However, a reexamination of these studies and available data indicates the MFIT is both valid and effective at identifying actual malingerers among civil litigants, and a number of these studies were limited through inappropriate inclusion of severely impaired patients and research designs of questionable validity. Also, the performance of a …
The Role Of Attention In Affect Perception: An Examination Of Mirsky's Four Factor Model Of Attention In Chronic Schizophrenia, Dennis R. Combs
The Role Of Attention In Affect Perception: An Examination Of Mirsky's Four Factor Model Of Attention In Chronic Schizophrenia, Dennis R. Combs
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Attention and affect perception was examined in a sample of sixty-five persons with chronic schizophrenia. Attentional skills may be related to deficits in affect perception due to a lack of attention to important information contained in the face. Deficits of this sort can dramatically inhibit appropriate social functioning. However, there is a lack of empirical research on this topic. Mirsky's four factor model of attention was used as a broad-based assessment of attentional functioning. The four factors of attention were: 1) Focus-Execute, 2) Encode, 3) Sustain, and 4) Shift. Neuropsychological measures reflective of attentional factor were administered. In this study, …