Confirming the latent structure and base rate of schizotypy: A taxometric analysis.

P. E. Meehl's (1962, 1990) model of schizotypy and the development of schizophrenia implies that the structure of liability for schizophrenia is dichotomous and that a "schizogene" determines membership in a latent class, or taxon (Meehl and R. R. Golden, 1982). The authors sought to determine the latent structure and base rate of schizotypy. They applied Meehl's (1973) MAXCOV-HITMAX taxometric analytic procedures to a subset of items from the Perceptual Aberration Scale (PAS; L. J. Chapman et al, 1978), a prominent psychometric index of schizotypy, derived from a randomly ascertained nonclinical sample (N?=?1,093). The results, in accordance with Meehl's conjectures, strongly suggest that schizotypy, as assessed by the PAS, is taxonic at the latent level with a general population taxon base rate of approximately .10. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Directed forgetting of emotional stimuli in borderline personality disorder.

On the basis of clinical literature, the authors hypothesized that individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) would show biased information processing when they were exposed to negative affective stimuli of a particular type. Individuals with BPD and controls were tested using a directed forgetting paradigm. Study participants were exposed to 3 types of words (borderline, neutral, positive) and were cued to either remember or forget each word as it was presented. There were no group differences on a free recall task for words in the remember condition. However, participants with BPD recalled significantly more of the borderline words from the forget condition than did controls. In other words, borderline participants remembered borderline words that they were instructed to forget. These results may be consistent with enhanced encoding of salient words and perhaps related themes in BPD individuals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The taxonicity of schizotypy: A replication.

P. E. Meehl's model (1962, 1990) of schizotypy and the development of schizophrenia implies that the structure of liability for schizophrenia is dichotomous, hypothesizing that a "schizogene" determines one's membership in a latent class (or taxon; P. E. Meehl & R. R. Golden, 1982). The present study sought to replicate earlier findings concerning the taxonic latent structure and general population base rate of schizotypy (M. F. Lenzenweger & L. Korfine, 1992). P. E. Meehl's (1973; P. E. Meehl & R. R. Golden, 1982) MAXCOV-HITMAX taxometric analytic procedures were applied to a subset of items from the Perceptual Aberration Scale (PAS; L. J. Chapman, J. P. Chapman, & M. L. Raulin, 1978), a prominent psychometric index of schizotypy, derived from a new randomly ascertained nonclinical university sample (N?=?1,646). Consistent with the authors' previous results as well as Meehl's conjectures, the data strongly suggest that schizotypy, as assessed by the PAS, is taxonic at the latent level with a low general population taxon base rate (i.e.,