Author(s)

James Castorina

Date Approved

12-9-2014

Embargo Period

3-3-2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A. Clinical Mental Health Counseling

Department

Psychology

College

College of Humanities & Social Sciences

Advisor

Dinzeo, Thomas

Subject(s)

Schizophrenia; Risk Factors

Disciplines

Psychiatric and Mental Health

Abstract

Schizophrenia and other related psychotic disorders are often associated with impairments in social and general functioning. It has been proposed that there may be underlying factors such as personality traits or cognitive abilities that contribute to one's psychosis proneness, or levels of schizotypy. In the current study, we expect to see a decline in overall functioning and verbal memory according to symptom severity. Particularly, we hypothesize a similar pattern with overall functioning and verbal memory in regards to negative symptomology with comparable results between an outpatient sample and those with high levels of schizotypy. Furthermore, based on prior research, we anticipate specific cognitive abilities like verbal memory and certain personality traits to predict success on performance-based tasks related to social and general functioning. One-way analyses of variance (ANOVA) will be conducted to examine the differences in performance-based tasks (SSPA, UPSA-B, and verbal memory task scores) across the 5 groups based on overall and negative symptom severity (3 subclinical from an undergraduate sample & 2 clinical from an outpatient sample). Hierarchical linear regression analyses will be run to examine how well verbal memory and the 5 personality characteristics (while controlling for symptom severity) predict scores on performance-based tasks (SSPA and UPSA=B scores).

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