Deficits in components of wanting in schizophrenia : evidence from daily life

Recent research has shown that the symptom of anhedonia in schizophrenia is likely an\ud impairment in wanting or the anticipation of enjoyment of a reward. Contrary to liking,\ud wanting requires the internal representation of the future outcome. In order to understand\ud the structure of wanting and its relationship to schizophrenia, wanting in the present study\ud was broken down into three components: reward prediction, effort computation, or cost-benefit\ud analysis. People with ( n = 47) and without (n = 41) schizophrenia were cell phones and called four times a day for one week. During each call, participants\ud answered questions about their goals and how much they think they will enjoy and how\ud difficult they believe completing each goal will be. After all the data were collected,\ud coders rated all goals on various degrees of pleasure and effort. The interaction between\ud future goals and the ratings from the coders were assessed. All components were shown\ud to be impaired in schizophrenia such that patients did not show a relationship between the\ud coder ratings and their own subjective ratings. One interpretation of these findings is that\ud patients are not reporting in nuanced ways, regardless of the goal. Future directions and\ud treatment implications are discussed