These results have led previous researchers (e.g., Edgar et al., 2006) to maintain that atypical hemispheric asymmetries could reflect a general risk factor associated with psychiatric illness.Īccumulating research has also documented the prevalence of schizotypal traits among non-clinical populations ( Johns & van Os, 2001 Siever & Davis, 2004). Patients diagnosed with schizophrenia have also shown deficits in emotion recognition linked to reduced right hemisphere lateralisation ( Ross et al., 2001). This decrease in REA has been found not to be associated with cognitive performance ( Sakuma, Hoff, & DeLisi, 1996), but with positive clinical symptoms such as hallucinations ( Bruder et al., 1995). Specifically, a reduction in, or complete absence of the expected right ear advantage (REA) for linguistic stimuli has been observed in schizophrenia ( Green, Hugdahl, & Mitchell, 1994). However, patients suffering from psychiatric illnesses frequently demonstrate impaired performance on dichotic listening measures of hemispheric asymmetry ( Sommer, Ramsey, & Kahn, 2001). In healthy right-handed individuals, the left hemisphere tends to be better at processing fundamental aspects of language such as phonemes and syntax, whereas the right hemisphere specialises in the perception of emotional prosody ( Bryden & MacRae, 1988). Nevertheless, the existence of these symptoms does signal the presence of shared characteristics with the clinical sphere, namely poorer emotion recognition performance. These results reveal that within the healthy population, higher levels of schizotypy are not associated with the atypical lateralisation of language and emotion. Individuals with higher schizotypal personality scores also demonstrated poorer sensitivity in detecting emotional prosody. Findings indicated that both high ( n = 64) and low ( n = 68) schizotypy groups demonstrated the typical right ear advantage for the detection of words and left ear advantage for the detection of emotional prosody. A dichotic listening task was used to examine the sensitivity and speed with which 132 right-handed participants (85 females and 47 males, mean age = 32.44, SD = 12.29) detected both words and emotional prosody, all of whom also completed the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire. In view of this and of research suggesting that schizotypal personality traits can also be expressed sub-clinically, the present study aimed to discover whether similar disturbances would be reflected in cognitive laterality patterns when symptoms of schizotypy are present yet at a non-clinical level. Striking disturbances have been reported in language and emotional prosody processing by patients diagnosed with schizophrenia.
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