Anna R. Docherty

Anhedonia as a phenotype for the Val158Met COMT polymorphism in relatives of patients with schizophrenia.

The Val(158)Met polymorphism of the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene has been associated with aspects of schizophrenia that are possibly related to the disorders pathogenesis. The present study investigated the Val(158)Met polymorphism in relation to anhedonia--a construct central to negative schizotypy. Anhedonia and other schizotypal characteristics were assessed in relatives of patients with schizophrenia, relatives of patients with bipolar disorder, and nonpsychiatric controls using the Chapman schizotypy scales and the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire. Compared with controls, relatives of individuals with schizophrenia had elevated scores on Chapman scales for social anhedonia and physical anhedonia, while relatives of patients with bipolar disorder exhibited only increased scores on the Social Anhedonia Scale. As a group, relatives of patients with schizophrenia who were homozygous for the val allele of the COMT polymorphism showed the highest elevations in self-reported social and physical anhedonia. Associations with the COMT polymorphism were absent in relatives of patients with bipolar disorder and control participants. Findings suggest that anhedonia is manifest in individuals who carry genetic liability for schizophrenia and is associated with the Val(158)Met polymorphism of the COMT gene.

Social and Physical Anhedonia and Valence and Arousal Aspects of Emotional Experience

Two studies examined whether self-reported anhedonia is associated with 2 facets of emotional experience, valence and arousal. In Study 1, in multiple assessments of emotional experience (e.g., naturalistic and lab contexts and social and nonsocial situations), people with elevated social anhedonia (n = 40) reported less intensity of positive affect than both controls (n = 30) and people with elevated perceptual aberration-magical ideation (n = 29). Social anhedonia was also associated with providing less emotional content when describing what it is like to experience positive situations. In contrast, both social anhedonia and perceptual aberration-magical ideation were associated with increased frequency of negative affect for their daily experiences. Moreover, social anhedonia was not associated with a decrease specifically in high-arousal emotions. In Study 2 (n = 339), social and physical anhedonia (but not perceptual aberration-magical ideation) were again associated with decreased self-reported positive affect to lab stimuli. In these studies, results were not statistically accounted for by personality, current mood, or current distress. Overall, results suggest anhedonia may be associated with a general decrease in self-reported positive affect intensity.

Differential associations between schizotypy facets and emotion traits.

Although emotional deficits in schizotypy have been reported, the exact nature of these deficits is not well understood. The goal of the current research was to further differentiate possible emotion deficits in schizotypy. In the current study, individuals with elevated social anhedonia (SocAnh; n=54) and elevated perceptual aberration/magical ideation (PerMag; n=27) were compared to control participants (n=304) on measures of attention to either positive or negative affect, level of anticipatory versus consummatory pleasure, and on the influence of negative mood on judgment of future risk. SocAnh was associated with decreased attention to positive emotions. At the same time, SocAnh was associated with both decreased anticipatory and decreased consummatory pleasure. In addition, in contrast to the other groups, there was no association in the SocAnh group between current negative mood and performance on a judgment task. In contrast to SocAnh, PerMag was associated with increased attention to negative emotions. Overall, these results suggest that SocAnh is associated with decreased attention to and experience of positive emotions and that PerMag is associated with increased attention to negative emotions.

Correspondence between psychometric and clinical high risk for psychosis in an undergraduate population.

Despite the common use of either psychometric or clinical methods for identifying individuals at risk for psychosis, previous research has not examined the correspondence and extent of convergence of these 2 approaches. Undergraduates (n = 160), selected from a larger pool, completed 3 self-report schizotypy scales: the Magical Ideation Scale, the Perceptual Aberration Scale, and the Revised Social Anhedonia Scale. They were administered the Structured Interview for Prodromal Syndromes. First, high correlations were observed for self-report and interview-rated psychotic-like experiences (rs between .48 and .61, p < .001). Second, 77% of individuals who identified as having a risk for psychosis with the self-report measures reported at least 1 clinically meaningful psychotic-like experience on the Structured Interview for Prodromal Syndromes. Third, receiver operating characteristic curve analyses showed that the self-report scales can be used to identify which participants report clinically meaningful positive symptoms. These results suggest that mostly White undergraduate participants who identify as at risk with the psychometric schizotypy approach report clinically meaningful psychotic-like experiences in an interview format and that the schizotypy scales are moderately to strongly correlated with interview-rated psychotic-like experiences. The results of the current research provide a baseline for comparing research between these 2 approaches.

The Role of Aberrant Salience and Self-Concept Clarity in Psychotic-Like Experiences

Most theories of psychotic-like experiences posit the involvement of cognitive mechanisms. The current research examined the relations between psychotic-like experiences and two cognitive mechanisms, high aberrant salience and low self-concept clarity. In particular, we examined whether aberrant salience, or the incorrect assignment of importance to neutral stimuli, and low self-concept clarity interacted to predict psychotic-like experiences. The current research included three large samples (n = 667, 724, 744) of participants and oversampled for increased schizotypal personality traits. In all three studies, an interaction between aberrant salience and self-concept clarity was found such that participants with high aberrant salience and low self-concept clarity had the highest levels of psychotic-like experiences. In addition, aberrant salience and self-concept clarity interacted to predict a supplemental measure of delusions in Study 2. In Study 3, in contrast to low self-concept clarity, neuroticism did not interact with aberrant salience to predict psychotic-like experiences, suggesting that the relation between low self-concept clarity and psychosis may not be a result of neuroticism. Additionally, aberrant salience and self-concept clarity did not interact to predict two other SPD criteria, social anhedonia or trait paranoia, which suggests the interaction is specific to psychotic-like experiences. Overall, our results are consistent with several cognitive models of psychosis suggesting that aberrant salience and self-concept clarity might be important mechanisms in the occurrence of psychotic-like symptoms.

Alogia and formal thought disorder: differential patterns of verbal fluency task performance.

BACKGROUND There is evidence that alogia and formal thought disorder (FTD), two prominent speech symptoms in schizophrenia, are associated with different patterns of verbal fluency task deficits. Verbal fluency is thought to involve several cognitive mechanisms, including controlled retrieval, semantic memory, and context processing. METHODS The current research examined whether alogia and FTD were associated with different patterns of verbal fluency performance and whether these patterns of verbal fluency performance would implicate deficits in controlled retrieval, semantic memory, or context processing. In the current research, 34 people with schizophrenia completed letter and category fluency tasks and detailed ratings of alogia and FTD symptoms were made from typed transcripts. RESULTS Overall, alogia was associated with increased response latency between each word on the category fluency task, suggesting an association between alogia and poor controlled retrieval. In contrast, FTD was associated with a decreased proportion of semantically-related words on letter fluency, suggesting an association between FTD and poor context processing. CONCLUSIONS Alogia and FTD appear to be associated with unique patterns of fluency performance, implicating separate cognitive mechanisms.

The time has come for dimensional personality disorder diagnosis

Author(s): Hopwood, Christopher J; Kotov, Roman; Krueger, Robert F; Watson, David; Widiger, Thomas A; Althoff, Robert R; Ansell, Emily B; Bach, Bo; Michael Bagby, R; Blais, Mark A; Bornovalova, Marina A; Chmielewski, Michael; Cicero, David C; Conway, Christopher; De Clercq, Barbara; De Fruyt, Filip; Docherty, Anna R; Eaton, Nicholas R; Edens, John F; Forbes, Miriam K; Forbush, Kelsie T; Hengartner, Michael P; Ivanova, Masha Y; Leising, Daniel; John Livesley, W; Lukowitsky, Mark R; Lynam, Donald R; Markon, Kristian E; Miller, Joshua D; Morey, Leslie C; Mullins-Sweatt, Stephanie N; Hans Ormel, J; Patrick, Christopher J; Pincus, Aaron L; Ruggero, Camilo; Samuel, Douglas B; Sellbom, Martin; Slade, Tim; Tackett, Jennifer L; Thomas, Katherine M; Trull, Timothy J; Vachon, David D; Waldman, Irwin D; Waszczuk, Monika A; Waugh, Mark H; Wright, Aidan GC; Yalch, Mathew M; Zald, David H; Zimmermann, Johannes

Progress in achieving quantitative classification of psychopathology

Shortcomings of approaches to classifying psychopathology based on expert consensus have given rise to contemporary efforts to classify psychopathology quantitatively. In this paper, we review progress in achieving a quantitative and empirical classification of psychopathology. A substantial empirical literature indicates that psychopathology is generally more dimensional than categorical. When the discreteness versus continuity of psychopathology is treated as a research question, as opposed to being decided as a matter of tradition, the evidence clearly supports the hypothesis of continuity. In addition, a related body of literature shows how psychopathology dimensions can be arranged in a hierarchy, ranging from very broad “spectrum level” dimensions, to specific and narrow clusters of symptoms. In this way, a quantitative approach solves the “problem of comorbidity” by explicitly modeling patterns of co‐occurrence among signs and symptoms within a detailed and variegated hierarchy of dimensional concepts with direct clinical utility. Indeed, extensive evidence pertaining to the dimensional and hierarchical structure of psychopathology has led to the formation of the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) Consortium. This is a group of 70 investigators working together to study empirical classification of psychopathology. In this paper, we describe the aims and current foci of the HiTOP Consortium. These aims pertain to continued research on the empirical organization of psychopathology; the connection between personality and psychopathology; the utility of empirically based psychopathology constructs in both research and the clinic; and the development of novel and comprehensive models and corresponding assessment instruments for psychopathology constructs derived from an empirical approach.

Does degree of gyrification underlie the phenotypic and genetic associations between cortical surface area and cognitive ability

The phenotypic and genetic relationship between global cortical size and general cognitive ability (GCA) appears to be driven by surface area (SA) and not cortical thickness (CT). Gyrification (cortical folding) is an important property of the cortex that helps to increase SA within a finite space, and may also improve connectivity by reducing distance between regions. Hence, gyrification may be what underlies the SA-GCA relationship. In previous phenotypic studies, a 3-dimensional gyrification index (3DGI) has been positively associated with cognitive ability and negatively associated with mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimers disease, and psychiatric disorders affecting cognition. However, the differential genetic associations of 3DGI and SA with GCA are still unclear. We examined the heritability of 3DGI, and the phenotypic, genetic, and environmental associations of 3DGI with SA and GCA in a large sample of adult male twins (N = 512). Nearly 85% of the variance in 3DGI was due to genes, and 3DGI had a strong phenotypic and genetic association with SA. Both 3DGI and total SA had positive phenotypic correlations with GCA. However, the SA-GCA correlation remained significant after controlling for 3DGI, but not the other way around. There was also significant genetic covariance between SA and GCA, but not between 3DGI and GCA. Thus, despite the phenotypic and genetic associations between 3DGI and SA, our results do not support the hypothesis that gyrification underlies the association between SA and GCA.

Toward a Model-Based Approach to the Clinical Assessment of Personality Psychopathology

Recent years have witnessed tremendous growth in the scope and sophistication of statistical methods available to explore the latent structure of psychopathology, involving continuous, discrete, and hybrid latent variables. The availability of such methods has fostered optimism that they can facilitate movement from classification primarily crafted through expert consensus to classification derived from empirically based models of psychopathological variation. The explication of diagnostic constructs with empirically supported structures can then facilitate the development of assessment tools that appropriately characterize these constructs. Our goal in this article is to illustrate how new statistical methods can inform conceptualization of personality psychopathology and therefore its assessment. We use magical thinking as an example, because both theory and earlier empirical work suggested the possibility of discrete aspects to the latent structure of personality psychopathology, particularly forms of psychopathology involving distortions of reality testing, yet other data suggest that personality psychopathology is generally continuous in nature. We directly compared the fit of a variety of latent variable models to magical thinking data from a sample enriched with clinically significant variation in psychotic symptomatology for explanatory purposes. Findings generally suggested a continuous latent variable model best represented magical thinking, but results varied somewhat depending on different indexes of model fit. We discuss the implications of the findings for classification and applied personality assessment. We also highlight some limitations of this type of approach that are illustrated by these data, including the importance of substantive interpretation, in addition to use of model fit indexes, when evaluating competing structural models.