ORIGINAL ARTICLES Automatic Activation of the Semantic Network in Schizophrenia: Evidence from Event-Related Brain Potentials

Background: Language disorder associated with schizo-phrenia might be due to disturbances in both automatic activation and mechanisms of controlled attention. The con-tribution of each process to semantic memory dysfunction has not been determined for schizophrenia, and the semantic priming paradigm is well-suited for addressing this question. In the present report, event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited under conditions assumed to reveal automatic activation (short prime-target interval and low proportion of related words) are compared directly with ERPs elicited under conditions associated with controlled processing (long prime-target interval and high proportion of related words). Methods: Visual ERPs were recorded during a lexical decision task, in which semantic relationship (associated and unassociated words), expectancy (relatedness proportions)