Semantic priming in schizophrenia: Systematic review and meta-analysis

Background Increased semantic priming is an influential theory of thought disorder in schizophrenia. However, studies to date have had conflicting findings. Aims To investigate semantic memory in patients with schizophrenia with and without thought disorder. Method Data were pooled from 36 studies comparing patients with schizophrenia and normal controls in semantic priming tasks. Data from 18 studies comparing patients with thought disorder with normal controls, and 13 studies comparing patients with and without thought disorder were also pooled. Results There was no support for altered semantic priming in schizophrenia as a whole. Increased semantic priming in patients with thought disorder was supported, but this was significant only in comparison with normal controls and not in comparison with patients without thought disorder. Stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) and general slowing of reaction time moderated the effect size for priming in patients with thought disorder. Conclusions Meta-analysis provides qualified support for increased semantic priming as a psychological abnormality underlying thought disorder. However, the possibility that the effect is an artefact of general slowing of reaction time in schizophrenia has not been excluded.

[1]  D. Goff,et al.  Increased temporal and prefrontal activity in response to semantic associations in schizophrenia. , 2007, Archives of general psychiatry.

[2]  F. Eustache,et al.  Semantic hyperpriming in schizophrenic patients: Increased facilitation or impaired inhibition in semantic association processing? , 2007, Schizophrenia Research.

[3]  Markus Schwaninger,et al.  Dopaminergic Modulation of Semantic Priming in Healthy Volunteers , 2006, Biological Psychiatry.

[4]  M. Munetz.  Schizophrenic Speech: Making Sense of Bathroots and Ponds That Fall in Doorways , 2006 .

[5]  A. David,et al.  Are semantic deficits in schizophrenia due to problems with access or storage? , 2006, Schizophrenia Research.

[6]  R. McCarley,et al.  Word priming in schizophrenia: Associational and semantic influences , 2006, Schizophrenia Research.

[7]  J. Grainger,et al.  An investigation of semantic priming in schizophrenia using a new priming paradigm , 2005, Schizophrenia Research.

[8]  M. Hardy-Bayle,et al.  Double-decision lexical tasks in thought-disordered schizophrenic patients: A path towards cognitive remediation? , 2005, Brain and Language.

[9]  T. McNamara.  Semantic Priming: Perspectives from Memory and Word Recognition , 2005 .

[10]  S. Rossell.  Affective semantic priming in patients with schizophrenia , 2004, Psychiatry Research.

[11]  G. Savage,et al.  Maintaining and updating semantic context in schizophrenia: an investigation of the effects of multiple remote primes , 2004, Psychiatry Research.

[12]  Manfred Spitzer,et al.  Semantic hyperpriming in thought-disordered patients with schizophrenia: state or trait?—a longitudinal investigation , 2003, Schizophrenia Research.

[13]  Jonathan D. Cohen,et al.  Automatic activation of the semantic network in schizophrenia: evidence from event-related brain potentials , 2003, Biological Psychiatry.

[14]  B. O’Donnell,et al.  N400 abnormalities in unmedicated patients with schizophrenia during a lexical decision task. , 2003, International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology.

[15]  Steffen Moritz,et al.  Increased automatic spreading of activation in thought-disordered schizophrenic patients , 2003, Schizophrenia Research.

[16]  M. Minzenberg,et al.  Slowed lexical access is uniquely associated with positive and disorganised symptoms in schizophrenia , 2003, Cognitive neuropsychiatry.

[17]  C. Passerieux,et al.  Semantic context-processing deficit in thought-disordered schizophrenic patients: Evidence from new semantic priming paradigms , 2003, Cognitive neuropsychiatry.

[18]  A. David,et al.  Cross-modal semantic priming in schizophrenia , 2002, Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society.

[19]  M. Minzenberg,et al.  Semantic priming in schizophrenia: A review and synthesis , 2002, Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society.

[20]  D. Naber,et al.  ‘Hyper-priming’ in thought-disordered schizophrenic patients , 2001, Psychological Medicine.

[21]  B Rockstroh,et al.  Increased semantic and repetition priming in schizophrenic patients. , 2001, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[22]  A. David,et al.  Direct and indirect semantic priming with neutral and emotional words in schizophrenia: Relationship to delusions , 2000 .

[23]  W. Perlstein,et al.  Increased Stroop facilitation effects in schizophrenia are not due to increased automatic spreading activation , 1999, Schizophrenia Research.

[24]  Jonathan D. Cohen,et al.  Modulation of language processing in schizophrenia: effects of context and haloperidol on the event-related potential , 1999, Biological Psychiatry.

[25]  T. Goldberg,et al.  Cognitive substrates of thought disorder, II: specifying a candidate cognitive mechanism. , 1998, The American journal of psychiatry.

[26]  J. Schatz.  Cognitive processing efficiency in schizophrenia: generalized vs domain specific deficits , 1998, Schizophrenia Research.

[27]  M Spitzer,et al.  Lateralised semantic and indirect semantic priming effects in people with schizophrenia , 1998, British Journal of Psychiatry.

[28]  B. Ober,et al.  Automatic versus controlled semantic priming in schizophrenia. , 1997, Neuropsychology.

[29]  J. Segui,et al.  Heterogeneity in cognitive functioning of schizophrenic patients evaluated by a lexical decision task , 1997, Psychological Medicine.

[30]  J. Segui,et al.  Syntactic and semantic processing in schizophrenic patients evaluated by lexical-decision tasks. , 1997, Neuropsychology.

[31]  M. Spitzer,et al.  Ereigniskorrelierte Potentiale bei semantischen Sprachverarbeitungsprozessen schizophrener Patienten , 1997, Der Nervenarzt.

[32]  B. Maher,et al.  Length of illness and the gradient from positive to negative semantic priming in schizophrenic patients , 1996, Schizophrenia Research.

[33]  R. Umansky,et al.  Effects of cognitive load on semantic priming in patients with schizophrenia. , 1995, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[34]  D. Freides,et al.  Investigating thought disorder in schizophrenia with the lexical decision task , 1995, Schizophrenia Research.

[35]  Sophia Vinogradov,et al.  Semantic priming of category relations in schizophrenia. , 1995 .

[36]  M. Spitzer,et al.  Semantic and phonological priming in schizophrenia. , 1994, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[37]  L. J. Chapman,et al.  Do Children and the Elderly Show Heightened Semantic Priming? How to Answer the Question. , 1994 .

[38]  M. Spitzer,et al.  Associative semantic network dysfunction in thought-disordered schizophrenic patients: Direct evidence from indirect semantic priming , 1993, Biological Psychiatry.

[39]  Sophia Vinogradov,et al.  Semantic priming of word pronunciation and lexical decision in schizophrenia , 1992, Schizophrenia Research.

[40]  Blair T. Johnson.  DSTAT : software for the meta-analytic review of research literatures , 1992 .

[41]  Judy A. McCown,et al.  Activation and facilitation in the lexicon of schizophrenics , 1992, Schizophrenia Research.

[42]  L. J. Chapman,et al.  Facilitation of word recognition by semantic priming in schizophrenia. , 1990, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[43]  B. Maher,et al.  Semantic priming in thought disordered schizophrenic patients , 1988, Schizophrenia Research.

[44]  D. Quinlan,et al.  Disordered Thinking and Schizophrenic Psychopathology , 1985 .

[45]  N C Andreasen,et al.  Thought, language, and communication disorders. I. Clinical assessment, definition of terms, and evaluation of their reliability. , 1979, Archives of general psychiatry.

[46]  E. Bleuler.  [Dementia praecox or the group of schizophrenias]. , 1968, Vertex.

[47]  M. Spitzer,et al.  A cognitive neuroscience view of schizophrenic thought disorder. , 1997, Schizophrenia bulletin.

[48]  D Servan-Schreiber,et al.  Semantic priming in schizophrenia: an examination of spreading activation using word pronunciation and multiple SOAs. , 1996, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[49]  R. Rosenthal.  Meta-analytic procedures for social research , 1984 .

[50]  Maher Ba.  A tentative theory of schizophrenic utterance. , 1983 .

[51]  B. Maher.  A tentative theory of schizophrenic utterance. , 1983, Progress in experimental personality research.

[52]  B. Maher,et al.  Progress in experimental personality research , 1964 .