Affective semantic priming in patients with schizophrenia

Affective semantic priming was examined in normal controls and patients with schizophrenia using a lexical decision task with four affective categories of related word pairs: neutral, happy, fearful and sad. Results demonstrated a striking and reliable effect of affective category upon semantic priming. Neutral and happy prime targets yielded significant semantic priming. Fearful and sad pairs showed no or modest semantic priming facilitation. Schizophrenia patients did not differ from normal controls on their priming scores to any of the four affective categories. These results support the notion that the associative mechanisms that bind negative valence words are distinct in nature; they also clarify that patients with schizophrenia do not show increased sensitivity to affect, and more specifically negative affective context during priming paradigms. This study further indicates the importance of replicating novel findings and reporting negative results