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Task-switching in schizophrenia: active switching costs and passive carry-over effects in an antisaccade paradigm

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Abstract

It has been hypothesized that impaired task-switching underlies some of the behavioural deficits in schizophrenia. However, task-switching involves many cognitive operations. In this study our goal was to isolate the effects on latency and accuracy that can be attributed to specific task-switch processes, by studying the inter-trial effects in blocks of randomly mixed prosaccades and antisaccades. By varying the preparatory interval between an instructional cue and the target, we assessed the costs of both (1) an active reconfiguration process that was triggered by the cue, and (2) passive carry-over effects persisting from the prior trial. We tested 15 schizophrenic subjects and 14 matched controls. A very short preparatory interval increased error rates and saccadic latencies in both groups, but more so in schizophrenia, suggesting difficulty in rapidly activating saccadic goals. However, the contrast between repeated and switched trials showed that the costs of task switching in schizophrenia were not significantly different from the controls, at either short or long preparatory intervals, for both antisaccades and prosaccades. These results confirm prior observations that passive carry-over effects are normal in schizophrenia, and show that active reconfiguration is also normal in this disorder. Thus problems with executive control in schizophrenia may not affect specific task-switching operations.

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Acknowledgments

JB was supported by a Canada Research Chair, a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Senior Scholarship, and CIHR grant MOP-81270. DSM was supported by NIMH 1R01 MH67720 and the MIND Institute.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurobiology, Harvard College, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Cathleen Greenzang

  2. Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Dara S. Manoach

  3. Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Charlestown, MA, USA

    Dara S. Manoach & Donald C. Goff

  4. Department of Neurology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Jason J. S. Barton

  5. Division of Neurology and Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Jason J. S. Barton

  6. Neuro-ophthalmology Section D, VGH Eye Care Center, 2550 Willow Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V5Z 3N9

    Jason J. S. Barton

Authors
  1. Cathleen Greenzang
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  2. Dara S. Manoach
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  3. Donald C. Goff
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  4. Jason J. S. Barton
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Correspondence to Jason J. S. Barton.

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Greenzang, C., Manoach, D.S., Goff, D.C. et al. Task-switching in schizophrenia: active switching costs and passive carry-over effects in an antisaccade paradigm. Exp Brain Res 181, 493–502 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-007-0946-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-007-0946-8

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