Childhood Attentional Dysfunctions Predict Social Deficits in Unaffected Adults at Risk for Schizophrenia

Abstract

Converging lines of evidence suggest that attentional dysfunctions are indicators of a biological susceptibility to some forms of schizophrenia. More specifically, following the criteria outlined by Holzman (1983), impaired attention can be considered a potential biological marker because of the: (a) well replicated association between schizophrenia and attentional dysfunctions in patients, both when in episode and in remission (Nuechterlein & Dawson, 1984); (b) evidence that attentional problems can be detected in unaffected first-degree adult relatives of schizophrenic patients (Wood & Cook, 1979; Keefe et al, 1989, Steinhauer et al, 1991) (c) reports from a number of high-risk studies that attentional deficits pre-date clinical symptoms by many years (Rutschmann et al, 1977; Nuechterlein, 1983; Cornblatt & Erlenmeyer-Kimling, 1985; Mirsky et al, 1986; Erlenmeyer-Kimling & Cornblatt, 1987b; Mirsky, 1988) and (4) preliminary results suggesting that attention per se is genetically transmitted (Cornblatt et al, 1988).