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B A Cornblatt

Publications and source records attributed to B A Cornblatt.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1997

Eye-tracking dysfunction in offspring from the New York High-Risk Project: diagnostic specificity and the role of attention.

Eye tracking abnormalities were studied in the offspring of schizophrenic, unipolar depressed and bipolar probands from the New York High-Risk Project to examine their familial specificity. Offspring of schizophrenic and depressed probands both had significant global performance deficits based on spectral purity measurements, but only the offspring of schizophrenic probands had an increased rate of intrusive anticipatory saccades. The greater specificity of high anticipatory saccade rate than global performance impairment suggests that this eye movement abnormality may provide a more specific biological marker of risk for schizophrenia than the global measure of eye tracking performance used in this study. Attention facilitation effectively normalized all performance deficits in the offspring of schizophrenic patients, suggesting that a problem sustaining focused visual attention may contribute to eye tracking deficits observed in the relatives of schizophrenic probands.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1997

Attentional functioning in schizotypal personality disorder.

OBJECTIVE: Previous research has shown biological, phenomenological, and cognitive similarities between schizophrenic patients and individuals with schizophrenia-related personality disorders and features. Evidence further suggests that of these common dysfunctions, abnormal attention is one of the most promising indicators of a biological susceptibility to schizophrenia-related disorders. Although attentional dysfunctions have been reliably detected in schizophrenic patients as well as in a variety of populations at risk for schizophrenia, few studies have investigated attention in clinical patients with schizotypal personality disorder. In this study, the extent of attentional impairment was assessed in subjects with schizotypal personality disorder, normal comparison subjects, patients with other personality disorders, and schizophrenic patients. METHOD: Thirty subjects with schizotypal personality disorder, 35 subjects with other personality disorders (i.e., clinic patients with non-odd cluster personality disorders), 36 subjects with schizophrenia, and 20 comparison subjects who did not meet criteria for any axis I or axis II disorder participated in this study. All subjects were diagnosed according to DSM-III criteria. Attention was assessed by using the Continuous Performance Test, Identical Pairs Version. RESULTS: Analyses indicated that subjects with schizotypal personality disorder, like schizophrenic subjects, performed significantly worse than comparison subjects on both the verbal and spatial tasks of the Continuous Performance Test, Identical Pairs Version. In contrast, patients with other personality disorders performed similarly to comparison subjects across conditions. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that patients with schizotypal personality disorder are impaired in their attentional functioning relative to normal comparison subjects and that they display deficits that are similar to the pattern characterizing schizophrenic patients.

Adult↗
PubMed1995

The New York High-Risk Project. Psychoses and cluster A personality disorders in offspring of schizophrenic parents at 23 years of follow-up.

BACKGROUND: We herein present lifetime prevalence rates of psychoses and DSM-III-R cluster A personality disorders in sample A of the New York High-Risk Project, a prospective study following offspring of parents with schizophrenia (HRSz subjects) and affective illness (HRAff subjects) and of psychiatrically normal parents (NC subjects) from midchildhood to adulthood. METHODS: We interviewed the offspring in adulthood with the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia, Lifetime Version, for Axis I disorders and the Personality Disorder Examination for Axis II disorders. RESULTS: Lifetime prevalence rates (+/- SE) of schizophrenia and unspecified psychosis were 11.1% +/- 4.3% and 5.6% +/- 3.1%, respectively, in the HRSz group and 0% in the HRAff and NC groups. Rates of schizoaffective disorder subclassified as mainly schizophrenic, however, were highest in the HRAff group. Rates of psychotic affective disorders did not differ between the HRSz and other groups. Age-corrected morbidity risks were similar to lifetime prevalence rates. Rates of the three cluster A personality disorders did not differ among the groups, but the combined rate was greater in the HRSz and HRAff groups than in the NC group. CONCLUSIONS: Our data strongly support a specific familial liability to narrowly defined schizophrenia that is not shared by families of probands with affective disorder. Schizoaffective disorder and cluster A personality disorders, however, occur in families of both schizophrenic probands and probands with affective disorder. Psychotic affective disorders, which are not increased in HRSz subjects, do not appear to be an expression of the liability to schizophrenia.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1994

Attentional abilities and measures of schizotypy: their variation and covariation in schizophrenic patients, their siblings, and normal control subjects.

Thirty-five schizophrenic patients in the early stages of illness, 26 of their healthy siblings, and 35 normal control subjects performed the Continuous Performance Test, Identical Pairs version (CPT-IP). Both schizophrenic patients and their siblings were significantly impaired in their attentional performance compared with normal subjects. These results support impaired attention as a vulnerability marker of schizophrenia and indicate that at-risk siblings of schizophrenic patients display attentional deficits comparable to those found for the offspring of schizophrenic parents. By contrast, a decline in performance with the onset of a distraction condition (auditory and visual stimuli) was seen only in schizophrenic patients; siblings and normal control subjects did not differ from one another in response to experimental distraction. Therefore, it was concluded that differential distractibility is likely to be a state marker of schizophrenia. In clinical assessments, healthy siblings rated themselves as experiencing significantly more physical anhedonia than did normal control subjects, but the siblings did not differ from normal control subjects in self-rated perceptual aberrations. Contrary to expectation, performance on the CPT-IP did not correlate significantly with either anhedonia or perceptual aberration in high-risk siblings. These results suggest that psychometrically measured "psychosis proneness" and neuropsychologically detected deficits may tap two nonoverlapping sources of vulnerability to schizophrenia.

Attention↗
PubMed1994

Impaired attention, genetics, and the pathophysiology of schizophrenia.

Impaired attention is commonly observed among schizophrenia patients and those at genetic risk for the disease. This article reviews over 40 studies that used various versions of the Continuous Performance Test (CPT) as the primary measure of attention. These studies of normal subjects, affected patients, and various at-risk populations demonstrate that the CPT is a psychometrically sound procedure that consistently discriminates affected patients from controls. Sufficiently difficult versions of this task have also demonstrated that impaired attention is (1) evident in schizophrenia patients regardless of clinical state, (2) detectable before illness onset, (3) apparently heritable, (4) specific--in terms of distinct profile patterns--to schizophrenia, and (5) predictive of later behavioral disturbances in susceptible individuals. Selected studies are also discussed that examine the role of attentional deficit in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and its potential consequences for personality development. With respect to pathophysiology, preliminary data suggest that subcortical brain dysfunction has an important role in the attentional deficits tapped by the CPT. With respect to personality, an association between chronically impaired attention and deficient social skills has been found. It is concluded that the CPT is a cost-effective measure of the attentional deficit commonly found in affected schizophrenia subjects and those at risk for the disorder, and is therefore a potentially valuable screening device for preventive intervention programs.

Attention↗
PubMed1994

Social competence deficits in adolescents at risk for schizophrenia.

Social competence in subjects at risk for schizophrenia and affective disorder and in normal-comparison subjects was examined in childhood and adolescence. Based on interviews with the parents of the subjects and with the children and adolescents themselves, subjects at risk for schizophrenia had poorer overall social competence than subjects at risk for affective disorder and comparison subjects in early adolescence and adolescence but not in childhood. In analyses of specific aspects of social competence, the adolescents at risk for schizophrenia had significantly poorer peer relationships and decreased hobbies/interests than the adolescents at risk for affective disorder and the normal-comparison adolescents. With respect to school adjustment, however, the two groups of adolescent offspring of parents with psychiatric disorders had significantly poorer adjustment than the comparison adolescents but did not differ from each other on this measure. These results suggest that various aspects of poor social competence may precede the onset of schizophrenia and play an important role in its development.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1993

The New York High-Risk Project: anhedonia, attentional deviance, and psychopathology.

In the New York High-Risk Project (NYHRP) we followed subjects at risk for schizophrenic or affective disorders and low-risk controls from childhood to adulthood, with the goal of identifying early predictors of later schizophrenia-related psychopathology. In this article, we focus on two potential predictors: the Physical Anhedonia Scale administered in adolescence and the Attention Deviance Index obtained in childhood. Subjects of this report are 161 members of the NYHRP's first sample (sample A), who had scores on both attention and anhedonia and had followup clinical assessments in adulthood. We used a path analysis model and several separate regression analyses to examine the relationships of the parent diagnostic groups, attentional dysfunction, and anhedonia to each other and to each of three psychopathological outcomes: schizophrenia and schizophrenia-related psychoses, major affective disorder, and social isolation in nonpsychotic subjects. Subject groups did not differ in anhedonia scores but did differ in childhood attentional dysfunction, psychosis, and social isolation, all of which are more common in subjects at risk for schizophrenia. In these subjects at risk for schizophrenia, but not in the other two groups of subjects, childhood attentional dysfunction is related to anhedonia, social isolation, and possibly nonparanoid psychosis. Anhedonia is associated with social isolation and with psychosis in females. Several other gender effects are also noted.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1993

Childhood precursors of affective vs. social deficits in adolescents at risk for schizophrenia.

Childhood attentional and neuromotor precursors of social competence and affective deficits in adolescents at risk for schizophrenia, adolescents at risk for affective disorder, and matched comparison adolescents were examined. The subjects were offspring of parents with schizophrenia or affective disorder and of normal parents matched on age, sex, and socioeconomic status from the New York High-Risk Project (Sample B). On the basis of interviews conducted when the subjects were children and adolescents, social competence was rated from child reports and parent reports, affective deficits were assessed by affective flattening ratings, and smiling was assessed by counting broad smiles. Adolescents at risk for schizophrenia had significantly greater social and affective deficits than adolescents at risk for affective disorder and comparison adolescents. In subjects at risk for schizophrenia, childhood neuromotor dysfunction predicted adolescent affective flattening, and childhood attentional dysfunction predicted adolescent social deficits. The results suggest that affective and social deficits in schizophrenia have different childhood precursors.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1992

A summary of attentional findings in the New York High-Risk Project.

We summarize here our findings with respect to attentional impairment among offspring of schizophrenic, affectively ill, and normal parents followed from childhood to adulthood during the two decades of the New York High-Risk Project (NYHRP). We review our data first, on childhood attentional performance in each of our two independent samples of such subjects and, second, on the relationship of early dysfunctions observed in this domain to psychopathological outcomes in adolescence and adulthood. Our cumulative results contribute strong support to the contention that global attentional dysfunctions may be viewed as a biobehavioral marker for the genetic liability to schizophrenic disorders.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

Schizotypy and sustained attention.

We examined sustained attention in 32 schizotypic and 43 normal control subjects from a large, randomly ascertained nonclinical university population. Schizotypy status was determined with the Perceptual Aberration Scale. Sustained attention was measured with the Continuous Performance Test-Identical Pairs. Schizotypic subjects displayed significantly poorer sustained-attention performance than did control subjects, as measured by d and overall hit rate. Although schizotypic subjects evidenced greater levels of anxiety and depression, sustained-attention performance was not significantly associated with these mental state factors. Our results provide evidence for a subtle sustained-attention deficit among schizotypes and are interpreted in light of previous attention research with actual schizophrenic patients as well as children at risk for schizophrenia. Utility of the psychometric high-risk strategy in psychopathology research is discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

Social competence and positive and negative symptoms: a longitudinal study of children and adolescents at risk for schizophrenia and affective disorder.

OBJECTIVE: The authors longitudinally examined social competence and positive and negative symptoms in children at risk for schizophrenia, children at risk for affective disorder, and matched normal subjects. METHOD: The subjects were offspring of parents with schizophrenia or affective disorder and normal comparison subjects matched on age, sex, and socioeconomic status. Ratings of social competence (Premorbid Adjustment Scale), affective flattening and poverty of speech (Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms), and positive formal thought disorder (Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms) were based on videotaped psychiatric interviews conducted in childhood (N = 144), early adolescence (N = 127), and adolescence (N = 106). RESULTS: In childhood, there were no significant group differences. In early adolescence, the subjects at risk for schizophrenia had poorer social competence than those at risk for affective disorder and the normal subjects. In early adolescence, the subjects at risk for schizophrenia also had greater positive thought disorder than those at risk for affective disorder but did not differ significantly from the normal subjects; there were no differences in negative symptoms. In adolescence, the subjects at risk for schizophrenia had poorer social competence and greater positive and negative symptoms than the adolescents at risk for affective disorder and the normal subjects. CONCLUSIONS: During early adolescence and adolescence, poor social competence may be more characteristic of children at risk for schizophrenia than those at risk for affective disorder. Higher levels of positive and negative symptoms may also be specific to subjects at risk for schizophrenia, but only during adolescence.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1990

Psychometric deviance in offspring at risk for schizophrenia: I. Initial delineation of a distinct subgroup.

Psychometric signs from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), which measure substantive disturbances in thinking, social relatedness, volition, and affective expressivity, were evaluated as possible indicators of transmissible liability specific to schizophrenia. Children of three criterion groups in the New York High-Risk Project--offspring at high risk (HR) for schizophrenia, psychiatric comparison (PC) offspring at risk for affective disorders, and normal comparison (NC) offspring not at augmented risk for psychiatric morbidity--were tested before the expression of schizophrenic psychopathology, when the subjects ranged in age from 13 to 26 years. The rate of psychometric deviance in the HR group (23%) was significantly higher than that in either the PC (7%) or NC (2%) groups, and profile analyses showed that the HR subgroup could be delineated by qualitative distinctions in personality functioning. Our results support the utility of MMPI indicators in etiologic investigations of schizophrenia.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1989

The continuous performance test, identical pairs version: II. Contrasting attentional profiles in schizophrenic and depressed patients.

The Continuous Performance Test-Identical Pairs version was administered to 14 schizophrenic patients, 17 depressed patients, and 28 normal controls. The task was divided into verbal and spatial stimuli, as well as no-distraction and distraction (verbal and auditory) conditions. Both patient groups displayed attentional impairments compared to normal subjects, but they differed from each other in specific profiles. Schizophrenic patients were characterized by a global impairment and a particular inability to focus on the critical stimuli, whether verbal or spatial. They also made an excess of random responses throughout the task but showed no evidence that attention declined from its initial level over time. Depressed patients did not display a global attentional deficit but did show a specific inability to attend to spatial as compared to verbal stimuli and, in particular, a confusion when the spatial stimuli were only slightly different. Performance on a secondary task in response to a change in expectation improved dramatically for depressed but not schizophrenic patients, suggesting a more efficient allocation strategy, a greater reserve of processing capacity, or more dependence on motivational factors in depressed patients. Schizophrenic and depressed patients were alike in extent of distractibility. Whereas normal controls improved with the onset of external distraction, schizophrenic and depressed patients deteriorated to an equal extent. Distractibility was thus concluded to be a correlate of acute psychiatric illness and not specific for schizophrenia.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

A taxometric analysis of cognitive and neuromotor variables in children at risk for schizophrenia.

A taxometric model was applied to detect a subgroup or taxon of children conjectured to be at highest risk for developing schizophrenia or related disorders in a sample of offspring of schizophrenic, depressed, and normal parents. Measures of cognitive and neuromotor performance in childhood were used as indicator tests in the analyses. A taxon consisting chiefly of children of schizophrenic parents was detected. Forty-seven percent of those children were assigned to the taxon, compared with 16% of the children of depressed parents and 4% of the children of normal parents. Assignment to the taxon is assessed in relation to the current functional status of the subjects in young adulthood.

Child↗
PubMed1988

The Continuous Performance Test, identical pairs version (CPT-IP): I. New findings about sustained attention in normal families.

Thirty families, consisting of two parents and two adolescent children, were tested on a high-processing load Continuous Performance Test, the CPT-IP, which required identification of identical stimulus pairs within a continuously presented series of stimuli. The purpose of this study was to provide normative data for research concerned with the role of attention in psychopathology, especially schizophrenia and major affective disorder. Retest data collected from 23 of the 30 families showed the CPT-IP to be a reliable measure of attention. A major developmental effect was found in capacity to sustain attention to spatial vs. verbal stimuli, which suggested that spatial skills are most developed during childhood and adolescence, while verbal attentional skills tend to peak in adulthood. Factor analysis and family transmission patterns further suggested that the two types of attention (spatial and verbal) were independent and that each was heritable to some degree. Experimental distraction did not disrupt performance in any of the subjects and, in fact, tended to improve it in the adolescents, especially for spatial stimuli. We conclude that the CPT-IP is appropriate for use with families containing members differing widely in age and processing skills.

Adolescent↗