Examining associations among positive and negative schizotypy, feedback-related learning, and attentional set switching.

Abstract

Positive schizotypy is a dimension of traits ranging from odd beliefs and experiences in the general population to the positive psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia (i.e., delusions and hallucinations), with high levels of positive schizotypy found in some personality disorders. Psychosis is related to increased dorsal striatal dopamine, suggesting that positive schizotypy might also reflect alterations in dorsal striatal functioning. The dorsal striatum is involved in reinforcement learning and cognitive flexibility. The current research examined whether positive schizotypy is related to impaired learning from probabilistic positive and negative feedback and to impaired attentional set switching. Participants included a group with extreme levels of positive schizotypy, a positive schizotypy control group, and a group with extreme levels of negative schizotypy. They completed feedback-related learning tasks and an attentional set-switching task. They also completed a response inhibition task to help assess for generalized task performance deficits. To further assess specificity, they also completed a range of mood and other measures. Overall, there was evidence that positive schizotypy was associated with poor feedback-related learning, perhaps especially and specifically with poorer learning from positive feedback. Positive schizotypy was also associated with poorer attentional set switching, but not with poorer response inhibition. Overall, the current study provides further evidence that positive schizotypy is associated with poor performance on reinforcement learning and cognitive flexibility tasks thought to involve the dorsal striatum. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).