Performance of a group of 35 youth and adults with High-Functioning Autism (HFA) was compared with a typical developing (TD) group on three Advanced Theory of Mind tests. The distinction between the social-cognitive and social-perceptual components of Theory of Mind was also explored. The HFA group had more difficulties in all tasks. Performance on the two social-cognitive tests was highly correlated in the HFA group, but these were not related with the social-perceptual component. These results suggest that the youth with HFA have difficulties on all the components of social knowledge but may be using different underlying cognitive abilities depending on the nature of the task.

Purpose: Studies of psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) within community samples of adolescents have explored predominantly positive experiences. There is a paucity of research examining the prevalence and correlates of negative PLEs, and whether particular subtypes of negative PLEs can be identified among the general population of adolescents. This study examined the association of both positive and negative PLEs with depressive symptoms, including detailed analysis of subtypes of positive and negative psychosis dimensions.Method: A community sample of 777 adolescents (50.9% girls: mean age 14.4 years) completed a questionnaire assessing positive and negative PLEs and depressive symptoms.Results: Principal component factor analysis identified four factors of positive symptoms (persecutory ideation, grandiose thinking, first-rank/hallucinatory experiences and self-referential thinking), and three factors of negative symptoms (social withdrawal, affective flattening, and avolition). Depressive symptoms were associated positively with persecutory ideation, first-rank/hallucinatory experiences, social withdrawal, and avolition, whereas grandiose thinking related negatively with depressive symptoms. Neither self-referential thinking nor affective flattening related to self-reported depression.Conclusions: These findings support the view that not all types of positive and negative PLEs in adolescence are associated with depression and, therefore, they may not confer the same vulnerability for psychotic disorders. (C) 2011 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

BackgroundAngelman syndrome (AS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder usually caused by an anomaly in the maternally inherited chromosome 15. The main features are severe intellectual disability, speech impairment, ataxia, epilepsy, sleep disorder and a behavioural phenotype that reportedly includes happy disposition, attraction to/fascination with water and hypermotoric behaviour.MethodWe studied the level of adaptive behaviour and the adaptive behavioural profile in the areas of 'motor skills', 'language and communication', 'personal life skills' and 'community life skills' in a group of 25 individuals with genetically confirmed AS, to determine whether there is a specific adaptive behaviour profile.Results and conclusionsNone of the individuals, whatever their chronological age, had reached a developmental age of 3 years. A specific adaptive behaviour profile was found, with 'personal life skills' emerging as relative strengths and 'social and communication skills' as weaknesses.

This study tested the assumption that measures of schizotypal personality provide non-clinical analogues of the heterogeneous symptomatology found in the schizophrenic disorder. The Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences (O-LIFE) was administered to schizophrenic patients and healthy controls, and measures of symptomatology from the Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS) and the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS) were assessed in the patient group. Schizophrenic patients scored significantly higher than controls on O-LIFE measures of positive, negative and disorganised schizotypy, while no difference in Impulsive Nonconformity was observed. In the patient group, SAPS positive symptomatology was significantly correlated with O-LIFE positive schizotypy (Unusual Experiences) and Cognitive Disorganisation. However, there was no significant relationship between SAPS/SANS disorganisation and O-LIFE Cognitive Disorganisation, or between the SANS negative factor score and O-LIFE Introvertive Anhedonia. The results suggest that the O-LIFE is a valid tool for assessing schizotypal personality in both schizophrenic patients and healthy controls. However, while the O-LIFE measure of positive schizotypy may correspond with SAPS/SANS positive schizophrenic symptomatology, the negative and disorganised subscales may not be analogous to their SAPS/SANS counterparts. There is also evidence to question the acceptability of Impulsive Nonconformity as a true schizophrenia-like construct.

INTRODUCTION:Studies on the neurocognitive correlates of schizotypy dimensions have found inconsistent results. This might stem from the fact that correlational methods, in contrast to cluster analysis, do not account for the possibility that a subject presents high scores on more than one dimension simultaneously. We aimed to establish clusters of normal adolescents based on schizotypy dimensions and compare them on neurocognitive, behavioural, and neurodevelopmental markers.METHODS:Two hundred seventy normal adolescents from the general population (mean age 13.4, SD=0.72) attending obligatory education were evaluated.RESULTS:A K-means iterative cluster analysis was performed with the Perceptual Aberration, Revised Social Anhedonia and Physical Anhedonia Scales. A forced four-cluster model yielded the following clusters: 'negative schizotypy', 'high or mixed schizotypy', 'positive schizotypy', and 'normal scorers'. Comparisons with ANOVAs showed that 'high schizotypes' performed poorly on neurocognition (Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children-Revised (WISC-R) and Verbal Fluency (FAS)) and obtained the highest teacher ratings (TRF) of behavioural problems. 'Negative schizotypes' had the worst WCST results and more dermatoglyphic abnormalities. Both clusters had more neurological soft signs than 'normal scorers' and 'positive schizotypes'.CONCLUSIONS:Our results with community adolescents found the same cluster structure than the previous cluster analytic studies conducted in adult college subjects. Furthermore, we showed differences among them on neurocognitive and malneurodevelopment markers consistent with the adult literature on schizotypy.

Positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia have been differentially associated with irregularities in verbal production, suggesting the involvement of different underlying mechanisms in psychotic symptomatology. In view of that, the present investigation examined whether the amount of verbal production would be also differentially associated with negative and positive symptoms of psychometric schizotypy in a sample of college students (N = 190). The participants were tested on a typical verbal fluency test and completed the O-LIFE schizotypy scales. The analyses revealed that decreased verbal fluency was associated with increased levels of negative schizotypy in participants who scored one standard deviation above the mean on Introvertive Anhedonia. In contrast, increased verbal fluency was associated with increased levels of positive schizotypy in participants who scored one standard deviation above the mean on Unusual Experiences. The obtained results are discussed in terms of the proposal that psychotic-like unusual experiences, like hallucinations, may be the product of a higher automatic spreading activation among stored lexical units, a mechanism which seems to account for the previously reported link between positive schizotypy and creativity.

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The main aim of this study is to assess whether there are differences in schizotypal traits and behavioural patterns in normal adolescents at risk for schizophrenia spectrum disorders in comparison to normal controls. Attentional deficit (measured by means of the CPT-IP test) has been our criterion to identify at-risk subjects. Subjects composing the sample of the study (n=202) come from an original sample of 1.498 normal junior students (mean age 13.2). Results show that there are differences in the behavioral variables studied between at-risk subjects and controls. At-risk subjects displayed more anxious and depressive traits, social problems and attentional problems. Within attentional deficit subjects, sex differences have been also found. There were no differences in schizotypal traits between both groups.

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There is much evidence that neurological soft signs (NSS) are highly prevalent in both adults and children with schizophrenia. In addition, they have been detected as early precursors of a schizophrenic outcome in at-risk subjects. Such findings point to the possible value of NSS as neurointegrative markers in schizophrenia which has been hypothesized to be a neurodevelopmental disease. In our study we used a biobehavioral criterion to select the 'at-risk' group, a sustained attentional deficit as measured by the continuous performance test (CPT). We compared 140 normal adolescents with 162 'CPT-linked vulnerable' adolescents (index subjects) on a battery for the assessment of NSS (including laterality), IQ, frontal lobe function and schizotypy. An association was found between NSS and attentional deficit. Furthermore, index subjects with NSS were characterized by lower IQ scores, poorer performance on frontal lobe tests and greater problems with social interaction. There was also a trend for an association between male sex and both left-handedness and NSS.