In the New York High-Risk Project we have followed two samples of subjects (Sample
A and Sample B) at risk for schizophrenic or affective disorders and low-risk controls
from childhood to adulthood, in an attempt to identify early predictors of later psychopathology.
We administered a large number of cognitive, psychometric and other types of measures
to both samples as possible psychopathology predictors, including an index of attentional
deviance assessed in childhood, the Physical Anhedonia Scale in adolescence, and three
measures of social outcome in adulthood ('Suspicious Solitude', 'Social Insecurity',
and 'Lack of Empathy'), derived from the Personality Disorders Examination. In the
analysis of the combined samples, parental diagnostic group, gender, attentional deviance
in childhood, and physical anhedonia in adolescence were used to predict three measures
of social outcome in adulthood. While only physical anhedonia was directly related
to all three social outcome measures, with the strongest relationship to Suspicious
Solitude, attention deviance successfully predicted two of the three outcomes. Subjects
at risk for affective disorder did not show increased levels of attention deviance,
physical anhedonia, or social dysfunction, relative to the normal control subjects.
Attention deviance appears to be a key neurobiological indicator and physical anhedonia
appears to be a potentiating factor mediating the relationship between risk for schizophrenia
and later social dysfunction.