Verbal self-monitoring in individuals with schizotypal personality traits: An exploratory ERP study

Abstract

Introduction Individuals with schizophrenia have deficits in verbal self-monitoring. This study aimed to assess whether individuals vulnerable to develop schizophrenia show similar difficulties. Methods Fifteen individuals with schizotypal personality traits and 15 healthy controls participated. All participants underwent an event-related potential (ERP) paradigm using a phoneme monitoring Go/No-Go task. Results Behavioural results showed that there was no significant difference between individuals with schizotypal personality traits and controls in post-error slowing, but schizotypal individuals had a significantly lower degree of error awareness and higher error rate. In the ERP data, when compared with controls, individuals with schizotypal personality traits showed similar error-related negativity (ERN) amplitude but significantly larger error positivity (Pe) amplitude. Conclusions Results of this study suggest that verbal error detection may be intact in individuals with schizotypal personality traits. However, it seems that this vulnerable population may have a greater emotional evaluation of errors.