The combined effects of traumatic life events and schizotypal personality traits on emotional processing

During the last decades, special emphasis is given in the study of high-risk populations for the development of schizophrenia via the application of endophenotypic indices. In this context, an internationally applied and effective strategy refers to the study of schizotypal personality traits, that is personality characteristics that resemble schizophrenia symptoms and indicate liability for the disorder. Besides schizotypal traits, the etiology of the disorder also includes the effects of early traumatic experiences. By combining experimental approaches stemming from neuropsychology and cognitive psychology, the aim of the present study is to examine the combined effects of different schizotypal traits and early traumatic events on processes of pivotal significance for schizophrenia, such as emotion processing and reality representation. In detail, in participants from the general population, we will examine the combined effects of paranoid, negative, disorganized and cognitive-perceptual schizotypy and different early traumatic life events (i.e. emotional, physical and sexual abuse as well as a parenting style characterized by overprotection and lack of true care for the child’s needs) on (a) facial emotion recognition in faces within and out of a social context with other people, (b) higher-order cognitive functions (i.e. selective attention, working memory, decision-making, response inhibition) with emotional correlates compared with the same higher-order cognitive functions, when only logical reasoning is important and (c) the representation of reality (as assessed with optical illusions) when it is based on basic perceptual mechanisms compared with the representation of reality when emotional processes are involved, which also require the activation of higher cognitive mechanisms.