Latent inhibition and psychosis-proneness: visual search as a function of pre-exposure to the target and schizotypy level

Two experiments examined the effects of schizotypy (STA) on performance in a visual search of fast moving words. Accuracy was examined as a function of prior experience with the target. The reported studies sought to demonstrate a latent inhibition (LI) effect that does not depend on the target/distractor reversal that has been so far employed in the human studies. Two target conditions were examined (PE: target pre-exposed presented with novel distactors; NPE: target novel presented with novel distractors). In experiment 1 (N=60), lower accuracy rate in the PE than in the NPE condition was obtained, but a disruption of this LI effect was found for high schizotypy scorers. In experiment 2 (N=61), the same procedure was repeated, but with the double amount of target pre-exposure. Latent inhibition was found to be disrupted in high schizotypy scorers, but was intact in low schizotypy scorers. The amount of pre-exposure facilitated overall performance, but had no effect on latent inhibition. The amount of pre-exposure, nevertheless, had an effect on the temporal manifestation of the phenomenon across the blocks of trials of the testing phase.